



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.. Copyright No.. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FOR SHINE AND SHADE 



for 

Sbtne anb Sbabe 

SHORT ESSAYS IN PRACTICAL RELIGION 



r 

WAYLAND HOYT, D. D. 

AUTHOR OF 

** Gleams from TauVs Trison,'" " brooks in the Way,^' 

^''i/llong the Tilgrtmage,^^ ^^ Saturday 

Jlfternoons^'' etc. 



PHILADELPHIA 

Bmetican :fBapti6t Ipublicatton Society 

1420 Chestnut Street 






OF CON«>KnSS 



WASHINGTON 



>j'^ 



<o'' 



\ 



Y\"° 



26767 



Copyright 1899 ^Y *^® 
American Baptist Publication Society 

TWO COPIES REG J v c 0. 



'fS 23 1599 



ef C?/?^' 



A^"'- 



jfrom tbe Societies own iprese 






Then the cIoud-riFt broadens, spanning earth 

that's under, 
Wide our world displays its worth, man's 

strife and strife's success; 
All the good and beauty, wonder crowning 

wonder. 
Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, 

nothing less. 

— T{obert 'Browning 



/ desire to express my thanks to the Editors of the 
'^Standard^^^ ^'Christian IVork,^^ '* Independent,^* '^Sun- 
day School Times,''* ''^IVatchman** ''^Congregational- 
ist,** ^^ Examiner,''* and ''^ Christian Endeavor IVorld,'* 
for permission to use matter which has appeared in their 
columns. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The Best ii 

II. According to Ability 14 

III. A Bad Way of Beginning Sunday . . 22 

IV. The Help-Bringer 27 

V. Our Lord's Share With Us 34 

VI. Our Lord's Resistance 39 

VII. Comfort and Temptation 43 

VIII. What to Do in Difficult Times ... 50 

IX. Personal Contact with the Personal 

Christ 56 

X. No Condemnation 64 

XL The Closed and the Open Gates ... 70 

XII. Drawn — Delivered 75 

XIII. The Fragrance of Service 79 

XIV. The Safe Deposit 83 

XV. The Regarding Christ 88 

XVI. A Specimen 93 

9 



XVII. Concerning Prayer 99 

XVIII. Concerning Special Prayer .... 105 

XIX. Concerning Hope 112 

XX. "Me" AND ♦♦Him" 118 

XXI. The Right Time for Things .... 127 
XXII. Having Things on Your Side . . .131 

XXIII. A Great Fact 136 

XXIV. A Revelation to the Sorrowful . 142 
XXV. The Revelation to Discouragement 146 

XXVI. The Champion of the Christian . . 153 

XXVII. The Inner Helper 159 

XXVIII. The True Way of Triumph .... 163 

XXIX. Glorifying God 165 

XXX. Jesus in his Nazareth Home . . . .168 

XXXI. A Successful Courtship .174 

XXXII. What the Bible Has of Cheer and 

Hope for the Aged . 182 

XXXIII. Immortality 190 

XXXIV. Christ With Us 198 



FOR SHINE AND SHADE 



THE BEST 



DID you ever wait to learn the lesson the 
Magi teach us in their gifts to the infant 
Jesus? They laid at his feet not anything 
unworthy, not that which cost them little in 
the getting, nor just the common things they 
could pick up easily and anywhere ; but they 
brought for presentation to him the best and 
costHest their toil and love could win — ^gold, 
frankincense, myrrh. They did their best. 
They gave their best. 

Much, in various ways, this fact that the 
Magi brought their best has taught me. May 
I suggest to you some of the teachings I have 
learned ? 

For one thing, I have learned that there 
ought to flash and flame before us the best 
ideal. It was because the Magi thought so 
loftily that they did so highly. That is a very 
real and even rugged rule for life, that no one 
II 



12 

can do better or nobler than he thinks. He 
may do worse ; he cannot do better. The 
sculptor Powers used to tell how, even some- 
times in his waking hours and often in his 
dreams, he was wont to seem to see, beyond 
the river flowing by his father' s Vermont farm- 
house, a beautiful, fascinating, beckoning white 
image. It became the passion of his life to 
capture that fair image and make it actual 
in marble. It was because he had such a 
lofty ideal that he wrought so nobly in the 
realm of sculpture, giving added radiance to 
American art. 

But it is not necessary that one be an artist 
to cherish the best ideal. Every one ought to 
cherish the best ideal in whatever department 
of life he may stand and work. There is a 
best even amid that which men call lowliest. 
I have read of one who determined to be the 
best bootblack in London. You see he had, 
and he had rightly, the best ideal of even so 
inconspicuous a function as his. How that 
ideal glorified his menial toil ! 

Some people say they will have the best 
ideal when they get out of their present cir- 
cumstances and can get their hand on more 
stately office. But that looking far from the 
present, and easy imagining of how they will 
do in other circumstances, is the quickest way 



13 

to shut against themselves the doors of higher 
and larger chance. You find gold in gravel. 
Be determined to see high possibilities even 
amid the common stones of the most every- 
day work and circumstance, and you will be 
likely to do your common work so well that 
you soon will be wanted for work and place 
less common. Have high thoughts of things. 
Think gold and nothing less. It was the best 
ideal the Magi had that made them bring their 
best. 

Another lesson these Magi, making presen- 
tation of their best, have taught me is that, 
thinking the best, they actually did the best. 
They did not think gold and become content 
to bring copper or even silver. They actually 
wrought up to their best ideal. I have got 
much help and impulse for myself here. Of 
course I do not pretend to say that I have 
steadily practised the lesson I have learned. 
But learning the lesson has certainly moved me 
to try more thoroughly. 

You see, there are so many people content 
simply with the best ideal. It is very beauti- 
ful and entrancing as it gleams before them in 
their mind's eye. But the trouble is, while 
they think gold they do not care to try to do 
gold. They are unwilling to struggle toward 
making their ideal best an actual best. They 



14 

are not stirred into resolute attempt toward 
their ideal. 

Ah, how true this is, in the study, in the 
house, in the store or workshop, in the church, 
the thinking high is good, but the doing high 
is laggard, slow, mean. I have got very much 
help and impulse for myself from the vision of 
these Magi, who not only thought gold, but 
did gold ; who had a high ideal, and then, 
though it took a six months' journey across the 
desert sands to do it, actually did the lofty 
thing they thought. They shame me, these 
Magi, when I find myself slipping back into 
somnolent content with shabby work. 

Let us remember, for our comfort, that, 
even though the best we can bring seems to us 
poor lead or rusty iron, if it be really our best, 
the issue of genuine desire and prayer and at- 
tempt, our Lord's gracious love will surely 
transmute our poor best to such gold as in 
heaven passes current. 

II 

ACCORDING TO ABILITY 

ACCORDING to his several ability"— it 
is thus our Lord announces and dis- 
tributes responsibilities. The main question 
is not as to amount of ability — whether five 



15 

talents or two or one ; the question is as to the 
use of it. And according to one's use is the 
giving or the withholding of the divine com- 
mendation. Let me illustrate. 

One writes somewhat in this way of one of 
the outstanding men who adorned a large por- 
tion of the preceding century and the earher 
years of our own : 

**In a region unseen by the world, in the 
stillness of the closet on his knees before God, 
he laments for secret sins, pleads for hoHness 
in his inner life, searches his heart with the 
word of God as with a lighted candle. He 
then goes into Parliament and the world. By 
the gleam of the gold men see that it has been 
purified by celestial fire. He touches every 
question by the Ithuriel spear of Christian 
truth. When the shifting meteor of expe- 
diency offers itself for the pole-star of duty men 
turn to him : ' Look on this, ' they say, ' with 
your eye ; we believe it has been purified with 
light divine. ' ' ' 

This man was born into an even princely 
place. Wealth was his by birthright. He had 
never need to know the tasking struggle for 
daily bread ; he had never need to force him- 
self into social position more lofty than his 
own. Every opulent comfort, every chance 
the selectest social advantage could proffer, 



i6 



came trooping to his hand. Of course no 
ministry of the best possible education was de- 
nied him. In addition, he was endowed with 
an intellect of peculiar brightness, clearness, 
wit, force. When he was in Parliament Ed- 
mund Burke sat there, and Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, and James Fox, and William Pitt ; 
and yet, though of different sort, so large and 
bright was this man's intellect that, notwith- 
standing defect of piping voice and insignifi- 
cant personal presence, he easily held his place 
as peer with men like these. Dr. Johnson' s 
Boswell heard him speak once at York. ' ' I 
saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon 
the table, ' ' he wrote ; ' ' but as I listened he 
grew and grew until the shrimp became a 
whale. ' ' 

Never gloomy, never morose, never morbid, 
enjoying to the full the bright things God had 
put within his so easy grasp, always the life, 
fascination, magnetic center of every social 
circle, this man yet, for conscience' sake and 
God's, devoted himself to the most tasking 
and unpopular service for the good of his 
fellow-men. For nineteen years he fought, 
with but few helpers, that tough, tenacious 
battle for the abolition of slavery in the domin- 
ions of Great Britain. He set his pen in mo- 
tion also. He wrote what, in his day, was a 



17 

very renowned book, ' ' The Practical View of 
Christianity." It was translated into many 
languages. Edmund Burke spent the largest 
share of the last two days of his life in reading 
it, steadying his great soul with the comfort he 
got from it. Away up in a Scottish parish a 
young minister perused its pages in the soli- 
tude of a sick chamber, and the mighty and 
masterful evangelical ministry of Thomas Chal- 
mers was the issue. But not to wait to men- 
tion other services various and great to which 
this man set his hand, as one tells us : 

* ' The concluding years of his life were calm 
and beautiful. He spent them at his country 
residence of Highwood. More and more his 
eye turned toward the home he was now near- 
ing. Through his vivacity, through his still 
fresh activity, there shone more and more the 
mellowing light of holiness. He loved to ex- 
patiate under the open sky, to watch the dew- 
drops, to gaze long and with unsated delight 
upon flowers. ' Surely, ' he would say, ' flowers 
are the smiles of God's goodness.' " 

And so, in 1832, William Wilberforce passed 
tranquilly to his rest and reward. He had 
been true to his trust of ability. He had put 
his talents to the usurers and they had great- 
ened grandly for his Lord. 

Turn now from the shining world of wealth 

B 



and Parliament and high society. Contem- 
porary with William Wilberforce there is a man 
living at Portsmouth, England. As different as 
possible is his environment. He was the son 
of a poor artisan in the royal dockyards. As 
soon as the boy's hands could be set at any- 
thing they were set at such toil as his father 
wrought at. After working thus for fifteen 
years he fell one day, was permanently lamed, 
could be artisan no more in royal dockyards. 

Fortunately his hands were still free and 
strong. Yes ; he would rest his lameness on 
the bench of the shoemaker and use his hands 
in cobbling shoes. Thenceforward, through 
his whole life, that was his duty. He was, and 
was always, nothing more than a mender of 
old shoes. He did not even rise to be a maker 
of new shoes. Evidently his talent for his craft 
was not surprising. Well, he was a kindly soul, 
and he must have some objects to which he 
could give his love. So his heart went out 
toward animals, and somehow he compelled 
those of diverse natures into harmony. You 
might have seen him plying his cobbler's tools 
with a cat perched on one shoulder and a ca- 
nary bird warbling on the other. 

But he found he needed better objects of 
affection. He had a nephew, one of the chil- 
dren of poverty, and lamed as he was. He 



19 

took him in. He undertook to bring him up. 
He made for him a very ingenious apparatus, 
of wood and leather which helped much the 
little fellow's lameness, and then he began to 
teach him regulariy the little he knew himself. 
Then the thought struck him. Why could he 
not teach two children as well as one ; why not 
three, four, five, six, and so on, of the children 
who could get no better schooling than the 
streets ? The son of a poor woman who sold 
sweetmeats was his second pupil ; soon he got 
in others, the worst children of a bad neigh- 
borhood. Finally he had a class of something 
like forty, girls on one side, boys on the other, 
of his cobbler's bench. His little room could 
hold no more. Then, as he hammered and 
stitched at his worn shoes, he taught his chil- 
dren. 

He was too poor to buy books for them ; 
they were too poor to buy books for them- 
selves. Torn fragments of handbills for teach- 
ing letters, a few slates for teaching writing and 
figuring — such apparatus was the best he could 
muster. But he was quite inventive and even 
philosophical in his way of teaching. He would 
gently strike a child on the hand. * ' What is 
this ? " he would ask the child. * ' My hand, ' ' 
the child would say. '* Spell it," h'e would 
require, and so, making lesson books of famihar 



20 

things, the child would get on. Also, he taught 
his children how to cook, to mend their shoes, 
etc. ; was careful of their health too, had all 
sorts of remedies for cuts, scalds, bruises, chil- 
blains ; saw that his children should have good 
playtimes also, making for them balls, bows, 
arrows, various playthings, with his own hands. 
Nor did he forget the children' s moral natures ; 
he taught them of God and Christ, and the 
beauty and nobleness of goodness and the 
ugliness and meanness of vice. 

So the years went on, and many a class of 
street arabs graduated from this academy of the 
cobbler's stall. Meantime he kept the wolf 
from the door by steadily cobbHng shoes. 

Well, he had grown to be sixty-two years 
old, and there was only one fear that troubled 
him, that old age and sickness resulting from 
his lameness should so damage his faculties 
that he would become incapable of continuing 
his work. He had no other fear. ^'How I 
wish you were rich," a lady said to him one 
day. ** I don't know, ma'am," he answered ; 
''but this I do know, there can't be in all 
England a happier man than I ; and I am sure 
everything is for the best. ' ' 

On the Christmas Eve of the year 1838, with 
that one fear shadowing him, he said to some 
one : ' ' I have but one wish now, that when I 



grow too old to maintain myself and to work at 
my school, I may die suddenly, just as a bird 
drops off its perch." Well, on the New Year's 
Day of 1839, this cobbler was at the house of 
a gentleman, talking about his school, and was 
holding in his hand one of his pupil's slates 
which he was showing. Like a lightning flash, 
smitten with apoplexy, he fell dead on the 
floor. So he was delivered from his one fear. 
There in his cobbler shop the little school 
children were waiting for the return of their 
beloved friend and master. He came back, 
but only as he was carried back. Ah, the sobs 
that resounded in the cobbler' s shop that day ! 
They say that for many days afterward groups 
of his scholars were still wandering up and 
down in front of his house ; they could not 
believe that the door would open to them no 
more, that they would never again see their 
friend waiting for them with his smihng face at 
that threshold. But the seed this cobbler 
planted did not die, if he must. The great 
and glorious growth of charitable schools for 
outcast children in Great Britain springs from 
the seed he planted in his cobbler's shop in 
the poor and narrow street. It was John 
Pounds, the crippled cobbler of Portsmouth, 
England, who planted the seed. 

To every man according to his several abiUty. 



John Pounds too, put his talents to the usurers, 
and what wealthy return came of them for the 
glory of his Lord ! This is the lesson for us ; 
whether low or high, whether in ampler place 
or narrower, we are to use the ability we have. 
Usurers of opportunity are on every side of 
every one of us. The work of John Pounds 
was as needful as the work of William Wilber- 
force. Chance and ability are not the main 
question; that we serve where and how we 
can is the main question. And whatever our 
chance and place may be, if we but serve, 
there shall come the equal commendation from 
the just and loving and regarding Lord, ''Well 
done, good and faithful servant. ' ' 

III 
A BAD WAY OF BEGINNING SUNDAY 

A BAD way of beginning Sunday is to begin 
it with the Sunday newspaper. And it 
is a fact, very sad and even ominous, that too 
many, even Christian people, do begin their 
Sundays in this bad way. 

Let us think of it a moment ; and I write 
especially for Christian people. 

The spiritual life needs nurture. We are 
commanded to grow in grace. A thing grows 



23 

as it lays hold of the sustenance appropriate to 
it. You cannot raise flowers in a snowbank ; 
you cannot get vigorous physical life out of 
food missing the elements which go to make 
up bone and nerve and muscle. I read once 
of some European explorers in Australia who, 
faihng in provision, were obliged to partake of 
a certain vegetable growing in Australia which 
seemed to satisfy hunger, but which, lacking 
altogether the elements of proper food for a 
European, brought the death of starvation, 
even though the stomach seemed surfeited. 

I think the Sunday secular newspaper, as far 
as nutriment for the spiritual life is concerned, 
is pretty accurately represented by that deceiv- 
ing AustraHan plant. What does the Sunday 
newspaper bring for the help and sustenance 
of the spiritual hfe, with its too frequent record 
of spicy social scandals, sensational stories, and 
simply worldly news? In this worldly world 
it is hard enough anyway to produce the un- 
worldly Hfe, and Sunday is the day set apart 
for the nurture of the spiritual life. Surely 
the man who in the least values the advance of 
the spiritual Hfe gives a most poor aid to it 
when the first thing on Sunday morning he de- 
vours the utterly secular columns of a secular 
Sunday newspaper. It is by no means a good 
preparation for the praise and worship and re- 



24 

ligious instruction of the public sanctuary. 
Surely the Sunday secular newspaper is a some- 
what hindering vestibule for the rehgious work 
and worship of the Lord' s Day. 

Besides, think of the armies of newsboys the 
sale of the Sunday secular papers sets at work 
every Sunday morning. Has your heart never 
been pained as you have heard their cries re- 
sounding through the Sunday quiet? They 
are not simply selling their newspapers, these 
boys ; they are being educated into an utter 
disregard of the sanctity of the Lord's Day. 
There are thousands and thousands of them 
thus set at work through all our cities by the 
Sunday secular newspaper. What sort of a 
moral crop are the future generations going to 
gather from such persistent education in a dis- 
regard of Sunday? I think every Christian 
man, every citizen who has the best weal of 
the community at heart, must fear somewhat 
as he thinks of a generation growing up so 
steadily educated in a wild disregard of the 
claims of God upon his day. And every 
Christian man who buys or takes a Sunday 
secular newspaper is himself an intimate and 
vital sharer in the anti-Sunday education of 
this vast army of newsboys. 

Think too of the effect of the coming of a 
Sunday secular newspaper, Sunday after Sun- 



25 

day, upon the children of a Christian house- 
hold. If the children of that household are 
at all taught in Christian ways, they are taught 
that the Sunday is the day of God, is to be 
recognized as God's day, is specially set apart 
for him, is to be used for him. But the bla- 
tant secular Sunday newspaper is the first thing 
that greets their young eyes on the Sunday 
morning. And their young eyes see too, the 
Christian father and mother greedily devour- 
ing it. The thought of God is not the first 
thing; the thought of the world is the first 
thing. How steadily the practice of such a 
Sunday newspaper reading by the Christian 
father and mother clashes with their teaching 
of the sanctity of the Lord's Day ! What won- 
der if these children of a Christian household 
even, grow up into the notion that the Sunday 
is in no real sense a day for God, but is only a 
day for self ; grow up into the notion that God 
has no special claim on any of their time any- 
way ; become out and out secularists ! How- 
ever you look at it there is tremendous moral 
damage to a Christian home by the persistent 
and irreverent intrusion of the Sunday news- 
paper. Its presence is a sad blight for the 
children. 

Besides, the Sunday secular newspaper is 
the perpetual educator toward a disregard of 



26 



law. Why may not the merchant who takes 
and reads the Sunday newspaper as well sell 
his wares on Sunday as the editor of a Sun- 
day newspaper may sell his? But the laws 
command a cessation of unnecessary toil on 
Sunday. Why is the editor of a Sunday news- 
paper released from the obligation of good 
citizenship to obey those laws? With what 
consistency and conscience can he insist on 
obedience to law in the columns of his news- 
paper when every week he is the flagrant vio- 
lator of law? And the Christian man who 
takes and reads the Sunday newspaper is the 
necessary abettor of such disregard of law. 
Steadily he helps it on. 

But the foundation principle of our republic 
is the sacred regard for law on the part of all 
good citizens. And there is no influence set- 
ting itself more constantly at the undermining 
of such regard for law than the Sunday secular 
press which violates law with such high hand. 
It is a bad thing for any man to have a hand 
in the education of the community toward the 
disregard of law; it is especially bad for a 
Christian man to lend his hand thus. But 
every habitual taker and reader of the Sunday 
secular newspaper is doing his certain and per- 
sonal share toward such damaging and unpa- 
triotic moral education. 



27 

Any way you look at it, this beginning the 
Sunday with the secular newspaper is bad. If 
only the Christian men in a community, the 
decent and controlling men, would refuse to 
either buy or advertise in the Sunday secular 
newspaper, this tremendous and unmoral in- 
fluence would cease. That they all do it, or 
that so many do it, is no excuse. Keep your 
skirts clear. Do not you do it. So, anyway, 
your influence will be on the better side. 



IV 
THE HELP-BRINQER 

SUCH was Onesiphorus. You will remem- 
ber how St. Paul makes reference to him 
in his second letter to Timothy : *'The Lord 
give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus ; 
for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed 
of my chain ; but, when he was in Rome, he 
sought me out very diligently and found me." 

And that is the precise meaning of the name 
Onesiphorus — Help-Bringer. Beautiful name, 
is it not ? And Onesiphorus was true to his 
name. He was not only called Help-Bringer, 
he was Help-Bringer. And that is more 
beautiful. 

Read again that famous extract from the 



28 



annals of the Roman historian Tacitus : ' ' But 
neither these religious ceremonies nor the lib- 
eral donations of the prince could efface from 
the minds of men the prevailing opinion that 
Rome was set on fire by his own — Nero's — 
orders. The infamy of that horrible transac- 
tion still adhered to him. In order, if possi- 
ble, to remove this imputation he determined 
to transfer the guilt to others. For this pur- 
pose he punished, with exquisite torture, a race 
of men detested for their evil practices, by 
vulgar appellation commonly called Christians. 
The name was derived from Christ, who, in 
the time of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that 
event the sect of which he was Founder re- 
ceived a blow which, for a time, checked the 
growth of a dangerous superstition ; but it 
revived soon after and spread with recruited 
vigor, not only in Judea, the soil which gave 
it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the 
common sink into which every thing infamous 
and abominable flows like a torrent from all 
quarters of the world. Nero proceeded with 
his usual artifice. He found a set of aban- 
doned and profligate wretches who were in- 
duced to confess themselves guilty, and on the 
evidence of such men a number of Christians 
were convicted, not on the clear evidence of 



29 

their having set the city on fire, but rather on 
account of their sullen hatred of the whole 
Roman race. They were put to death with 
exquisite cruelty, and to their sufferings Nero 
added mockery and derision. Some were cov- 
ered with the skins of beasts and left to be de- 
voured by dogs ; others were nailed to the 
cross ; numbers were burnt alive, and many, 
covered over with inflammable matter, were 
lighted up when the day decHned to serve as 
torches during the night. For the convenience 
of seeing this tragic spectacle the emperor lent 
his own gardens. He added the sports of the 
circus and assisted in person, sometimes driv- 
ing a curricle and occasionally mixing with the 
rabble in his coachman's dress." Thomas 
Carlyle speaks of this passage from Tacitus as 
the most somber and portentous piece of writ- 
ing he knows of in Hterature. 

You see, Nero wanted to build for himself a 
vast palace, which he subsequently did build 
and called the Golden House. And in order 
to make room for it there in the neighborhood 
of the Palatine and the EsquiUne Hills, the 
most thickly populated portion of the great 
metropolis, he, in an insanity of cruelty and 
wickedness, set fire to the city. The fire raged 
for several days and nights and multitudes were 
killed and rendered homeless. So tremendous 



3° 

was the smiting against him, however, of an 
exasperated public opinion that even Nero 
quailed. So he sought to divert suspicion from 
himself by the scattering of large donatives, by 
various religious ceremonies, and by insinuat- 
ing that the blame of the fire did not rest upon 
himself, but upon the Christians. 

Thus began to ravage the first and awful per- 
secution of the Christians, the terrific method 
of which Tacitus has just been telling us. 

The Apostle Paul, some two or three years 
back, had been released from his first impris- 
onment at Rome, because on trial it had been 
found impossible to substantiate the charges of 
sedition, etc. , laid against him. 

That first imprisonment had been a kind of 
honorable captivity. He had lived in his own 
hired apartments, and though he was held by 
a coupling chain to a guardian soldier, his 
friends had free access to him, and in many 
ways the hardnesses of his captivity had been 
cushioned. 

A free man once more and going forth on 
various missionary journeys, perhaps as far west 
as Spain, he has returned and is at Troas pos- 
sibly. 

But this first great persecution of the Chris- 
tians is flaming everywhere ; of course the 
apostle is known everywhere as the foremost 



31 

Christian. So now he is seized, doubtless by 
Nero's orders, and is hastily brought to Rome 
a prisoner the second time. How hastily he 
is seized and whirled away we may conjecture 
from the fact that he left behind him at Troas 
his warm traveling cloak, which he so much 
needed now in his old age, and some precious 
books and parchments. Very pathetically he 
beseeches Timothy to come to him from Ephe- 
sus and to stop at Troas as he comes and 
bring with him the so sadly needed cloak and 
the books and parchments. 

And now, thus in Rome the second time 
and imprisoned the second time, the aged 
apostle is in sorely different plight from his 
first imprisonment there. No longer is he a 
favored prisoner. He is prisoner now in the 
jaggedest meaning of it — lonely, cold, ill-fed, 
variously suffering, confronted, he knows, by a 
speedy martyr's death. 

But now like a gleam of warm sunshine 
breaking through the clouds and chill of a 
bitter day, Onesiphorous on a visit from Ephe- 
sus to Rome, and notwithstanding the murki- 
est danger to himself, manages to get to him — 
Onesiphorus the Help-Bringer. 

And the need for and the ministry of the 
Help-Bringer are not yet out of date in this 
sad world of ours. Rather they are very stren- 



32 

uously in date and will always be. The Help- 
Bringer was wanted in the first Christian cen- 
tury. He is still wanted in the closing years 
of the nineteenth. 

That was a beautiful identification Lady 
Frere gave of her husband, Sir Bartle Frere, 
the distinguished English ruler of India. Once 
she had to meet her husband at the railway 
station and had with her a servant who had 
never seen the baronet. ''You must go and 
look for Sir Bartle," she ordered. ''But," 
replied the nonplussed servant, ' ' how shall I 
know him ? " " Oh, ' ' said Lady Frere, ' ' look 
for a tall gentleman helping somebody. ' * The 
identification was sufficient. He found a tall 
gentleman helping an old lady out of a railway 
carriage and knew him at once. The need 
for such in this world of ours is not yet fin- 
ished. 

' ' There, ' ' said a neighbor pointing to a 
village carpenter, ' ' there is a man who has 
done more good, I really believe, in this com- 
munity than any other person who ever lived 
in it. He cannot talk very much in public 
and he does not try. He is not worth two 
thousand dollars and it is very little he can put 
down on subscription papers. But a new fam- 
ily never moves into the village that he does 
not find them out and give them a neighborly 



33 

welcome and offer them some service. He is 
on the lookout to give strangers a seat in his 
pew at church. He is always ready to watch 
with a sick neighbor and to look after his affairs 
for him. He finds time for a pleasant word to 
every child he meets, and you will always see 
the children climbing into his wagon when he 
has no other load. He has a genius for help- 
ing folks, and it does me good to meet him on 
the street." 

Though the Onesiphorus of St. Paul's day 
is dead long ago, there is wide room and crying 
call for such sort of Help-Bringer in these days. 

Let this trace of the ancient Help-Bringer 
stimulate us to be modern ones. 

Comfort one another, 
For the way is growing dreary, 
And the feet are often weary, 

And the heart is very sad. 
There is heavy burden-bearing, 
When it seems that none are caring, 

And we half forget that ever we 
were glad. 

Comfort one another, 
With the handclasp close and tender. 
With the sweetness love can render. 

And the look of friendly eyes. 
Do not wait with grace unspoken, 
While life's daily bread is broken, 

Gentle speech is oft like manna from 
the skies. 

C 



34 



OUR LORD'S SHARE WITH US 

ALL instances of share and sympathy have 
singular fascination. For example, that 
story of the great Napoleon walking through 
his camp one night, when the coming day 
would usher in a mighty battle, and finding a 
wearied sentinel asleep upon his post ; then 
the emperor taking himself the soldier's mus- 
ket and pacing his beat until the sentinel awak- 
ened, then restoring his musket to him with no 
word save of pity for his weariness. 

For example again : The Count Turenne, in 
desperate battle, plunging in among his men, 
and saying, as he flung apart his cloak : '*See, 
brothers, I am among you ; I do not bid you 
go where I will not go myself; see, I have no 
concealed armor ; fight on with me. ' ' 

For example again : The Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, with the bluest blood of the English 
aristocracy in his veins, night after night leav- 
ing his princely home in the West End of 
London, and himself going searching amid the 
squahd arches of Holborn Viaduct, and getting 
out of them the little street boys, and taking 
them to a warm room and feeding them, 
clothing them, instructing them, and so start- 



35 

ing and keeping going his beneficent night 
schools for the little arabs of the London 
streets. 

For example again : Mr. Lincoln, with the 
cares of a nation on him, and the anxieties of 
his great position, leaving the White House 
and taking the journey to Chain Bridge, where 
in dangerous neighborhood the army was lying, 
and himself entering the tent of William Scott, 
private, condemned to be shot next day for 
sleeping on his post when sentinel, and Mr. 
Lincoln himself investigating the case, and dis- 
covering that the real right of it was the boy's 
freedom, and restoring him with untouched 
honor to the ranks of his regiment. 

There is a spell about such incidents ; they 
entrance and hold us — this giving of them- 
selves of the loftier for the lower. There is in 
such incidents the ' ' touch of nature which 
makes the whole world kin." There is no 
heart that can help responding to them. 

But do we enough think that such heart- 
compelling incidents as these are but the faint- 
est and farthest illustrations of the essential 
meaning of our Christianity? For the heart 
of our Christianity is the humanizing of Deity 
— the veritable share of Deity in onr humanity. 

Derzhavin's mighty hymn to Deity is sub- 
limely true : 



36 

O thou Eternal One ! whose presence bright 

All space doth occupy, all motion guide ; 
Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight; 

Thou only God ! There is no God beside ! 
Being above all beings ! Three in One ! 

Whom none can comprehend, and none explore ; 
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone ; 

Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er ! 

Being whom we call God — and know no more ! 

But the Deity will not thus remain hidden 
in the recesses of his own infinity. The eter- 
nal Word who was in the beginning, who was 
with God, and who was God, by whom all 
things were made, and without whom was not 
anything made that hath been made, he be- 
came flesh, and dwelt among us. 

That is the essential substance of our Chris- 
tianity. That is that without which Christianity 
is slain, as a man is slain if you transfix his 
heart. This — the actual and veritable share of 
Deity in our humanity. 

And the sharing goes on, even to the last 
and grimmest limit. The ruggedest fact in 
these lives of ours is the fact of temptation. 
No man escapes it. Even the best blessings 
hold capsulate the possibility of temptation. 
The man of culture is tempted to become the 
man of icy isolation, and to despise his fellows. 
The man of wealth is tempted to forget his 
stewardship and to consume possession simply 



37 

upon himself. The man of strength is tempted 
to foolhardiness. The man of stainless reputa- 
tion is tempted into hardness toward his fallen 
brethren. 

As there cannot be sunlight without shadow, 
so there never is great gift that it does not 
carry with it the temptation to somehow abuse 
the gift. There is no more rugged fact than 
this of temptation. And in experience of 
temptation our Lord takes share. 

Hastily run through the temptations assault- 
ing our Lord there in the wilderness. The 
temptation after long fasting by bodily want. 
Every man is in this realm tempted somehow. 
This physical nature is very real and very im- 
perious. And when the temptation of gratify- 
ing right bodily desire and appetite in wrong 
ways was resisted by our Lord, the pain of re- 
fusal pierced. The pang of an awful bodily 
hunger remained. Veritably our Lord suffered, 
being tempted. 

The temptation to presumption. The usual 
way of descent from the pinnacle of the temple 
was by the winding stairs. But Satan suggests 
a presumptuous flinging of the self down, and so 
exciting the wonder of the people, and quotes 
Scripture to back the bad suggestion. Who 
has not felt such assault of presumption — to 
dare things ; to plunge into wild speculations, 



38 

heedless of the consequences ; to put Provi- 
dence to some unusual proof, and so to sud- 
denly win one's desires instead of quietly and 
steadily reaching them in the appointed way of 
laborious endeavor? 

And who has not known that other tempta- 
tion which assaults our Lord — of taking Satan 
into partnership, of doing evil that good may 
come ? How such lure solicits when men are 
tempted to win wealth, and the position and 
power which wealth gives, by evil twists in 
business ? How this temptation dogs the steps 
of the politician, bidding him substitute expe- 
diency for principle ? How this temptation of 
partnership with evil sounds in the miserable 
maxim, "Being in Rome, do as the Romans 
do, ' ' and so gain social distinction ? 

And notice that our Lord shared with us the 
loneliness of temptation. A graphic touch that, 
St. Mark gives, ''and he was with the wild 
beasts. ' ' The places wild beasts haunt are not 
inhabited. Shut away from all companionship, 
our Lord met and foiled the tempter. 

True symbol this of our own temptation. 
In the last analysis each man must meet his foe 
and fight his fight alone. Though he be in 
the city strong, yet in the privacy of his own 
heart he must meet and master the tempter. 

How real prayer must be, sent into the heart 



39 

of such a sharing Christ ! How we may reckon 
on his sympathy ! How we may confidently 
expect his loving aid ! What unwisdom to at- 
tempt the Hving of such Uves as ours apart 
from him ! 



VI 
OUR LORD'S RESISTANCE 

WE are too apt to think of Jesus as tempted 
only in that period which we name, by 
eminence, the Temptation, when by the sug- 
gestion of turning stones to bread, of pre- 
sumptuously casting himself from the pinnacle 
of the temple, of making partnership with 
evil in the furtherance of his Messianic plan, 
Satan made onset on him. But there is a 
word of St. Luke's we should remember here : 
"And when the devil had ended all the temp- 
tation, he departed from him for a season." 

No. Our Lord's life was, like our own, a 
tempted hfe from end to end. In certain 
moods, perhaps this of all the Scripture is the 
most gracious to me. For we have not a high 
priest that cannot be touched with the feeling 
of our infirmities ; but one that hath been in 
all points tempted hke as we are, yet without 
sin. 



40 

When after the wonder of the feeding of the 
five thousand there in the grassy plain of El- 
Batiah, the multitude and the disciples with 
them were tumultuous with the purpose of 
forcing on our Lord the crown of an earthly 
kinghood, again, I am sure, temptation smote 
our Lord. Keep close grip always on the real 
humanity of our Lord, and estimate a Httle 
what sort of temptation here sohcited. The 
temptation to ambition, that from the carpen- 
ter he should swiftly become the king. The 
temptation of appeal to patriotism ; our Lord 
was Hebrew, and sympathized with all the finer 
patriotic longings of the enslaved Hebrews. 
What might he not, as king, accomplish for 
his countrymen against the galling Roman 
yoke. The temptation to painlessness, to the 
missing of sufi'ering; to thus reach the king- 
hood his Messiahship involved, and slip by the 
awful cross. 

But to have thus reached kinghood in any 
other than the predicted, suffering, self-sacrific- 
ing way, would have been falseness to his whole 
Messianic mission. For our Lord's Messianic 
kinghood was to be kinghood won neither by 
the gaping wonder the miracle produced, nor 
by any other way than that of character and 
atonement. His path to empire must be the 
path of the cross. 



41 

And here again the old and constantly re- 
curring choice between wrong kinghood and 
right kinghood was presented to him. Temp- 
tation to other than the right and commanded 
courses solicited. 

I think it most suggestive, interesting, help- 
ful, to mark how our Lord managed this temp- 
tation to an evil kinghood. Well, our Lord 
resisted this temptation to an evil kinghood in 
its beginning. ''When Jesus therefore per- 
ceived that they would come and take him by 
force to make him a king," the instant the 
temptation announced itself as temptation, at 
the beginning of its onset, our Lord girded 
himself for fight against it. The point of the 
lodgment of temptation, as an urging force 
within ourselves, is the point of the beginning. 
I have found the old schoolmen's analysis of 
an act of sin exceedingly valuable for myself — 
suggestion, delectation, consent. If I refuse 
to allow suggestion to pass over into delecta- 
tion, temptation to sin can never get on into 
consent to sin. At once to stop the passing 
over of suggestion to delectation, right there 
at the beginning, is to make successful fight 
against temptation. 

Also our Lord at once took active measures 
against the temptation. In St. Matthew we 
are told : ''And straightway Jesus constrained 



42 

his disciples to get into a ship, and to go be- 
fore him unto the other side, while he sent the 
multitudes away." Here is the cause of our 
own so frequent failure. We dally about stern, 
strong measures of resistance. But our Lord 
moved actively and with girded purpose and 
determined deed against temptation. Solicit- 
ing disciples and multitudes were strongly sent 
away. 

Also our Lord immediately withdrew him- 
self from the environment of the temptation. 
St. John tells us : *' He departed again into a 
mountain himself alone." I think there is 
most pertinent suggestion here. Sometimes 
you cannot help it, but when you can, sepa- 
rate yourself as far as possible from the tempt- 
ing environment. 

Also our Lord resisted this temptation to an 
evil kinghood by summoning to his aid the 
force opposed to it. St. Mark tells us what he 
was doing on the lonely mountain : **He de- 
parted into a mountain to pray." Disciples 
and multitudes tempted, he summoned the 
opposing force of prayer. Here is disclosed a 
great practical principle for life — opposites ex- 
clude each other. When sin solicits, call to 
yourself and give yourself to the precise op- 
posite of the soliciting sin, and you baffle the 
sin. The better music of Orpheus so en- 



43 

tranced the Argonauts sailing by the island of 
the Sirens, they did not care for the siren fas- 
cinations. Summon the better music, grasp 
quickly at the opposite of that to which temp- 
tation calls. 

Also our Lord mastered this temptation to 
an evil kinghood by the habit of devotion. 
He departed again into a mountain himself 
alone. I think that ''again" means much. 
It means the habit of communion with the 
Father. It means a soul enthralled by right- 
eousness. The fuller I am of the thought of 
God and desire to please him, the less appe- 
tency will there be in me for temptation to get 
hold of. 

Is not such study of our Lord's resistance 
crowded with help for us? Ought not our 
Lord's way of persistence to be our own way? 
Need the battle go against us ? It shall not, 
if we copy him. 

VII 
COMFORT AMID TEMPTATION 

IT has many a time seemed to me as though 
this Scripture were a very garden of com- 
fort amid temptation : ' ' There hath no temp- 
tation taken you but such as is common to 



44 

man ; but God is faithful, who will not suffer 
you to be tempted above that ye are able ; 
but will with the temptation also make a way 
to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. ' ' 

Did you ever notice, my friend, that the 
gates into this garden of comfort were gates of 
warning? ''Wherefore, let him that thinketh 
he standeth take heed lest he fall. ' ' This im- 
mediately precedes. I think we ought to keep 
vision on these gates of warning. There is no 
comfort amid temptation for a foolish and fool- 
hardy self-confidence. No man is too strong 
to fall. The self-confident man, how strong 
soever he may think himself, is the hkeliest to 
fall. The man vigilant toward his own weak- 
ness, and so self-distrustful that he keeps 
heart-hold upon a higher power, is the man 
likeliest not to fall. 

But, passing these gates of warning, I think 
the Scripture into which they open a very gar- 
den of comfort amid assaulting temptations of 
every sort. 

Will you, for a moment, enter this garden 
of comfort with me ? I want to point out for 
your plucking but a single flower of comfort 
growing luxuriantly here among beautiful and 
fragrant ranks of flowers. This is the flower 
of comfort, blooming amid this garden of it 
and planted alongside of all its other flowers, 



45 

perhaps implied rather than expressed, but 
nevertheless very evidently there, this : To be 
tempted is not to sin ; though you are tempted 
you are not therefore sinful. 

There are two significances the word * ' temp- 
tation ' ' carries in our Bibles. 

While the great Brooklyn bridge was build- 
ing I was living in that city and used to get 
delight in clambering over the rising structure. 
The chief engineer of the bridge was very kind 
to me ; and one day while we were together 
climbing about the bridge he took me to a pecu- 
liar sort of a machine. It was composed of great 
wheels, moving a cylinder set over against 
some other great wheels moving another cylin- 
der, each opposing cylinder possessing, if I re- 
member rightly, mighty iron teeth or claws, able 
to seize and hold wire steadily and remorselessly. 
Coils of the wires which were to go to form the 
huge cables of the bridge, were being unwound 
and grasped by these iron teeth or claws. 
Then the great wheels were set going, so that 
they revolved in ways opposite to each other, 
and thus a tense and tremendous strain was 
brought to bear upon the wire to see whether 
it were strong enough and honest enough for 
the high place and dignity of share in the ma- 
jestic cables whence the roadway was to hang. 

That was temptation in the sense of trial. 



46 

An old and almost obsolete word tells its 
meaning more exactly — '* tentation." Such 
sort of temptation often comes from God. 
Frequently he directly sends it. Take a speci- 
men or two from the old Scripture : ' ' And it 
came to pass after these things, that God did 
tempt Abraham. " God put him to trial. God 
subjected him to tentation. Take a specimen 
from the newer Scripture. There our Lord 
and the disciples were with the hungry multi- 
tude confronting them on the grassy plain of 
El-Batiah : **When Jesus then hfted up his 
eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, 
he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy 
bread, that these may eat ? And this he said 
to prove him, for he himself knew what he 
would do." That word ''prove" holds pre- 
cisely this significance of testing, trying, of 
tentation. 

But there is another meaning temptation 
carries in our Bibles. While I was with the 
chief engineer of the Brooklyn bridge that day, 
he told me about a lot of wire they had just 
then been obliged to discard and refuse be- 
cause it could not meet the appointed test of 
strain. A contractor furnishing the wire had 
sent a lot having insufficient honesty and 
toughness. Of course this sort was cheaper, 
and the difference in price would go into the 



47 

man's pocket. Do you not see that this man, 
furnishing such wire, was subjected to another 
sort of temptation ? Here was an instance of 
direct sohcitation to evil, and the man, for the 
sake of the poor pelf, had sadly yielded to it. 

In this last sense of direct sohcitation to evil, 
God never tempts any man. The devil does, 
however, and, as well, a man's own evil pas- 
sions. Notice what the Apostle James tells us : 
**Let no man say when he is tempted," that 
is, in this last and evil meaning of temptation, 
**I am tempted of God: for God cannot be 
tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any 
man : but every man is tempted, when he is 
drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. ' ' 

The first sort of temptation — that is, tenta- 
tion, trial — God often sends. The second sort 
of temptation — that is, sohcitation to evil — God 
only permits, but he does permit it. This last 
sort our Lord knew, felt, vanquished, as well 
as the first sort. Satan came to him in the 
wilderness, as well as at other times. He was 
tempted in all points like as we are, yet with- 
out sin. 

But now, my friend, neither because we are 
tried, nor because we are distinctly solicited to 
evil, does it follow that we are necessarily and 
specifically sinful. Here are some wise words, 
and true ones too : "To be tempted is not to 



48 

sin." We need to remember this. Some sen- 
sitive natures conclude that they must be very 
sinful because they are so much tempted; 
whereas multiplicity of temptation is often ra- 
ther an evidence of faithfulness and integrity. 
The strongest attacks are made upon the 
strongest forts. Satan does not waste his am- 
munition. He would not be so earnestly seek- 
ing to capture us if we were already completely 
his captives. Repeated temptation argues the 
existence of resistance. Sin is consent to the 
temptation. When there is no acquiescence 
there is no sin. The greatly tempted Christ 
was the perfectly sinless Christ. That is a wise 
and witty thing which somebody has said : 
^'Of all essences, the devil likes ac^ui'-esctnce 
best." As long as you refuse to yield him 
that essence, you have defeated him — you 
have not sinned. 

It is one thing to be tempted, Eschylus, 
It is another thing to fall. 

So when, against your volition, evil thoughts 
come thronging round you like pestering flies 
in summer; or when you are strangely con- 
scious of the tides of passion rushing against 
your will, and perhaps almost taking it off its 
feet, but which your will withstands ; or when 
peculiar and iterated trials seem to set them- 



49 

selves at straining your endurance, do not 
therefore think yourself either to have sinned 
or to be, in a despairing way, sinful. To be 
tempted is not to sin, it is only to be tempted. 
And it is common to man ; and the faithful 
God will not suffer you to be tempted above 
that ye are able, and somehow he will send 
either enabhng or escape. You see, in the 
above enumeration, how many flowers of com- 
fort grow in this garden of comfort amid temp- 
tation. But just now I instance this one flower, 
upspringing with them all — to be tempted is 
not to sin. 

I well remember what a bloom of comfort 
this was to me when I first clearly saw this 
flower and plucked it for my own using and in- 
haled its refreshing fragrance — to be tempted 
either in the sense of trial or in the sense of 
solicitation to evil, is not necessarily to sin, is 
not a special symptom of special sinfulness. 
Have courage, then, and high hope. Only do 
not fail to see the gates of warning which open 
into this garden of comfort. Do not be self- 
confident. Be self-distrustful, with your con- 
fidence steadily grappling God. And not only 
this one flower I have been pointing out for 
your plucking, but all the other flowers growing 
in this garden of comfort amid temptation shall 
bloom for you and invigorate you. 

D 



50 

VIII 
WHAT TO DO IN DIFFICULT TIMES 

YOU remember that pathetic poem of our 
own Longfellow's, entitled ''The Chamber 
Over the Gate." Through every line of it 
sobs David's lament for Absalom. And the 
poem brings that distant sorrow into kinship 
with our own in lines like these : 

There is no far or near, 
There is neither there nor here, 
There is neither soon nor late, 
In that chamber over the gate ; 
Nor any long ago 
To that cry of human woe, 
O Absalom, my son ! 

It was there, in the chamber over the gate, 
David wanted to sit; for difficult times had 
gripped him and very sorely. And we too 
very frequently want to sit there ; for, as the 
poem sings, it is not in ancient Mahanaim only 
that the chamber over the gate is builded. 

To be sure the victory had turned toward 
David in that battle with the rebelhous forces 
which Absalom had gathered and led against 
his father. But the victory had been sadly 
dimmed for David by the death of Absalom, 
toward whom, notwithstanding treachery and 



51 

even attempted parricide, his heart would go 
yearning forth. 

Caught in his difficult times and whelmed in 
a grief passionate, withdrawn, and alone, it was 
there in the chamber over the gate David 
wanted to sit and weep his heart out, as he be- 
wailed : ^ * O my son Absalom, my son, my son 
Absalom ! would God I had died for thee, O 
Absalom, my son, my son ! ' * 

But in the chamber over the gate King 
David — and just because he was king and had 
kingly duties pressing — King David might no 
longer sit, indulging in the luxury of his grief 

''And it was told Joab, Behold, the king 
weepeth and mourneth for Absalom. And 
the victory that day was turned into mourning 
unto all the people : for the people heard say 
that day how the king was grieved for his son. 
And the people gat them by stealth that day 
into the city, as people being ashamed steal 
away when they flee in battle." 

That would never do. The king, gripped in 
his difficult times, and sitting in the chamber 
over the gate, and lonelily bewaihng, and think- 
ing of no account the surprising victory his loyal 
followers had won for him — that would never 
do ! Such action would take all the heart and 
loyalty out of the people, would turn all the 
shining of their brave struggling into shame. 



52 

* ' And Joab came into the house of the king, 
and said, Thou hast shamed this day the faces 
of all thy servants, which this day have saved 
thy hfe, and the lives of thy sons and of thy 
daughters, and the hves of thy wives, and the 
lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest 
thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For 
thou hast declared this day, that thou regardest 
neither princes nor servants : for this day I 
perceive, that if Absalom had Hved, and all we 
had died this day, then it had pleased thee 
well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak 
comfortably unto thy servants : for I swear by 
the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not 
tarry one with thee this night : and that will be 
worse unto thee than all the evil that befell 
thee from thy youth until now. Then the 
king arose and sat in the gate. And they told 
unto all the people, saying. Behold, the king 
doth sit in the gate. And all the people came 
before the king : for Israel had fled every man 
to his tent." 

Then the king arose and sat in the gate. 
He left the chamber over the gate and sat in 
the gate. In the gate was the place where the 
king ought to sit. It was the place of pres- 
ence ; it was the place of kingly adjudication 
among the people ; it was the place of kingly 
and daily duty. And when the king sat in the 



53 

gate, and all the people came before the king, 
that is, passed in splendid and jubilant review 
before him, appropriately celebrating the tough 
victory they had just won for him, then the 
people were sure that the king was still king ; 
that he meant to do, amid and notwithstand- 
ing the hard, sad times which had seized him, 
his kingly duty ; that he still had kingly solici- 
tude for them and interest in them. So their 
hearts grew brave, and ready to confront the 
problems of the resettling and re-estabhshment 
of the kingdom which had been much dis- 
turbed by the convulsion of the rebelhon ; and 
also the cooling embers of their loyalty began 
to flame anew. 

Is not this snatch of the old story singularly 
suggestive concerning what we ought to do in 
difficult times? Duty notwithstanding — that 
is what we ought to do and keep doing in dif- 
ficult times. 

I think in sad, hard times we ought not to 
sit in the chamber over the gate, but rather in 
the gate, for reasons like these : 

Because sitting in the chamber over the gate, 
instead of sitting in the gate, only weakens our- 
selves. .A merely useless complaining, even a 
passionate grief selfishly indulged, can breed 
only an enervating weakness. Which is the 
nobler picture, David forgetting his kinghood 



54 

and the duties belonging to his kinghood in 
the chamber over the gate, or David, though 
his heart were sore, remembering his kinghood 
and bravely doing the duties belonging to it in 
the gate ? 

Also, if we sit in the chamber over the gate 
when we ought instead to be in our right place 
in the gate, we shall afford Joab right occasion 
of finding fault. Joab is by no means a pleas- 
ant gentleman. He is very rude and brusque. 
He plunges in upon your luxurious grieving 
and bewailing very unceremoniously. He has 
small sympathy. He lacks heart. But he tells 
you some very real truths every now and then. 
And besides, whether you exactly hke him or 
not, he is a very important gentleman. He 
usually wields a good deal of power. He is 
quite likely to be an important member of your 
church or Sunday-school. You cannot well af- 
ford to get on without him. It would be by 
no means best for you to excite his opposition. 
It is vastly better to follow even his somewhat 
rude advice, and, even though you are sad, and 
amid all sorts of obstacles, set about doing the 
duty next you, than to affront him and give 
him chance to say the things about you he 
surely will. I tell you it is vastly better to 
have Joab for your friend than to have him 
look askance toward you. Sit in the gate of 



55 

your duty, then, hard as it may be, and have 
Joab your helper rather than your hinderer. 

Also, if we sit in the chamber over the gate 
instead of in the gate, those who trust us will 
lose heart. That is a great sentence by a great 
thinker : ' ' Persons are the most potent factors 
of progress and change in history. ' ' And there 
is no man, be he ever so weak or low, who does 
not wield the scepter of a personal power over 
somebody. I was looking at a specimen of 
that pest, the Russian thistle, the other day. 
It breaks off from its single stem in the autumn, 
and all along its edges it is crowded with seed- 
capsules, and when the winds haste and dash 
it along the prairies, every time it strikes the 
ground the seed-capsules burst and scatter their 
contents ; and next season the wide prairie is 
hirsute with the thistle. And if you sit in the 
chamber over the gate idly and sadly bewailing 
your difficult times, instead of sitting in the 
gate where your duty calls you, you cannot help 
sowing the Russian thistles of disheartenment 
and discouragement all about you, especially 
among those over whom your personality is 
potent, and who trust you and look up to you. 
I was reading of a young officer during the 
war, whose battery had dwindled to a single 
gun, but who would keep his gun loaded and 
firing at the enemy. And when at last he 



56 

heard the shouts of victory, he said : ' ' Then I 
knew that, whatever others did, for me a vic- 
tory meant keeping my own gun loaded and 
fired. ' ' And I am sure that lonely gun of his 
did minister toward that victory, not only by 
the shot it would keep hurling against the 
enemy, but also by the sound of a steady faith- 
fulness, even amid the toughest time, it kept 
sending among his comrades fighting in other 
portions of the field. 



IX 



PERSONAL CONTACT WITH THE 
PERSONAL CHRIST 

PATHETIC words these : ^' Come unto me, 
all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest. " " All ye that labor and are heavy 
laden " — these words mean hte rally, all ye that 
are beaten out and fainting with bafiled toil ; 
all ye that are loaded down with burdens. 
Very universal are these the classes pointed 
out. For who is not sometime fainting and 
failing? who does not sometime feei himself 
to be overburdened ? Very beautiful the mu- 
sic and the meaning of Christ's promise over 
against such states — '* and I will give you rest. ' ' 
But fasten attention on those words ' ' me ' ' 



57 

and *'I " — come unto me all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden and /will give you rest. 

Notice that Christ makes the reception of 
such rest hang solely upon contact with him- 
self. 

And this is evermore the way of Christ. As 
the sun is the day, so Christ is Christianity. 
Christ makes himself, in religion, the be-all 
and the end-all. 

I wonder if you think enough of this place 
into which Christ puts himself, of the tremen- 
dous and solitary emphasis which he gives to 
these words "me " and '' I " in all his teach- 
ing? You are not to believe so much doctrines 
about Christ as Christ. You are not to come, 
in the first place, to ritual and sacraments. 
You are to come to Christ. Christ, and Christ 
alone, is the center of moral and spiritual obli- 
gation. 

' * Suppose for one moment, ' ' says some one, 
* '■ the following expressions to have been put 
into the mouth of Socrates : ' If I drink the 
cup of hemlock, it will draw all men unto me ' ; 
'Come unto Socrates, all ye that travail and 
are heavy laden, and he will give you rest.' 
Or suppose these to have been the words of 
one of his disciples : * The love of Socrates 
constrains us ' ; ' Whether we Hve we live unto 
Socrates, or whether we die we die unto Soc- 



58 

rates ' ; * Whether we Hve or die, we are Socra- 
tes ' ; * I drink the hemlock with Socrates, 
nevertheless I live ; yet not I but Socrates 
liveth in me, and the life which I now live in 
the flesh I live by the faith in Socrates, who 
loved me and gave himself for me. ' Applied 
to Socrates, such expressions are ridiculous. 
Apphed to Jesus Christ, they are a mighty 
power. Would any follower have dared to 
apply them to Sakya Muni, or Confucius, or 
Mohammed? Yet there is that in Jesus Christ 
which makes them fit with propriety. Why is 
this? The only possible answer is, there is 
something in him which belongs to him alone, 
a worthiness that is absolutely divine." Yes, 
that is the only possible explanation ; in Christ 
alone is such personal worthiness as makes 
prostrate, personal yielding of the soul to him 
reasonable and right. 

There, on one of the summits of the Alps, 
you may sometimes see projected clearly against 
the clouds a gigantic, towering, awe-inspiring 
man, vaster than any man that ever was. But 
when you look closely, you see that the vast 
man is only a mirage of your own poor self, 
having no real existence whatsoever, produced 
only by the peculiar state of the atmosphere at 
certain times ; it is only an apparition. They 
name it rightly when they name it the Brocken 



59 

Specter. But here in human history there is 
One so grand and great, so high and yet so ten- 
der and so loving, so divine and yet at the same 
time so human — and no specter either. He is 
no manufactured and filmy product of a human 
imagination, but a veritable flesh and blood real 
person in human history. He is so unique in 
righteousness, and benevolent with forgiveness, 
and powerful with help, that men cannot help 
feeling it to be the most right and congruous of 
postures when he puts himself at the center of 
everything, and says : "Come unto me, all ye 
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest." Oh, yes ! that is religion, personal 
contact with the personal Christ. 

And will you notice that right here, in thus 
making his own personaHty the center of every- 
thing in rehgion, the Lord Christ feeds and 
fills one of the most craving hungers of the 
human heart. There must be ''principles for 
the intellect," but there must be "persons for 
the heart. ' ' How true this ! All along the line 
of history you must get your principle incar- 
nated in a person before you can make much 
headway with it. See how persons incarnate 
principles ! Rebellion against the priesthood 
— Latimer; justification by faith — Luther; di- 
vine sovereignty — Calvin ; the true doctrine of 
sacraments — Zwingli ; rights of man as against 



6o 



lawless tyranny — Cromwell ; religious liberty — 
Roger Williams. Always and everywhere prin- 
ciples must become incarnated in persons, who 
shall illustrate them, and draw out to them a 
human loving and following, before they can 
make much headway. 

See how personal contact with the personal 
Christ is reUgious rest, in two or three direc- 
tions. 

Personal contact with the personal Christ is 
personal salvation, and so is rest. When Dr. 
Bonar of Scotland was in Jerusalem, he visited 
the synagogue of the Karite Jews. These Jews 
are distinguished for rejecting the rabbinical 
tradition, and clinging only to the Scripture. 
With their rabbi Dr. Bonar entered into con- 
versation, seeking to preach Christ to him. 

* ' Your nation is scattered ; how is this ? ' ' 
the doctor asked. 

''For our sins," the rabbi said. 

' ' And how are these to be taken away ? ' ' 

" By prayer and repentance." 

' ' But are you sure that God will accept your 
prayer and repentance ? * ' 

" Yes ; we believe that he will. ' ' 

" But is nothing more needed than these ? ' ' 

''Nothing; these are enough." 

**But in the days of your fathers something 
more was needed," the doctor rejoined. 



6i 



''What was that?" 

*' The blood of the sacrifice. ' ' 

''Yes; the blood was needed then." 

" But is it not needed now? " rejoined Dr. 
Bonar. 

" No ; prayer and repentance are enough." 

' ' But God would not accept the prayers of 
your fathers without the blood, will he accept 
the prayers of their children without it ? " 

' ' Yes ; God is very merciful. ' ' 

" True, God is very merciful ; yet he was so 
in the days of your fathers, but he would not 
accept their prayers without the blood. Do 
you think he has changed ? ' ' 

' ' God is merciful, * ' said the rabbi. 

' ' Truly, he is so ; but if he would not ac- 
cept the prayers of Moses and David without 
the blood, will he receive yours ? ' ' 

The rabbi had no answer but the mercy of 
God. It was clear that the rabbi felt the need 
of something other. It was clear he longed for 
sacrifice sufficient and efficient. This longing 
is universal. It is met and fed in Christ. 
Christ is our atonement. Christ is the perfect 
sacrifice. Personal contact with the personal 
Christ is spiritual rest, because he is the suf- 
ficient sacrifice. 

Also, personal contact with the personal 
Christ is personal sanctification, and so is rest. 



62 



That is a beautiful word of Luther' s : * ' A 
mother's love to her child is much stronger 
than her distaste for the scurf on the child's 
head. And even so God's love toward us is 
far stronger than our uncleanness. Therefore, 
though we be sinners, we lose not thereby our 
childhood. ' ' Yes ; but the true child would 
seek to throw off its uncleanness, that it might 
the better approve itself to the mother's love. 
So the true Christian. True these other words 
of Luther : '' I am a doctor in Holy Scripture, 
and for many years have preached Christ ; yet 
to this day I have not been able to put Satan 
off or to drive him away as I would." But 
what will cleanse us and make us strong to 
drive off Satan? Personal contact with the 
personal Christ. Let the Scripture tell us : 
' ' But we all, with open face beholding as in a 
glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into 
the same image from glory to glory." 

Also, personal contact with the personal 
Christ is simpUfication of duty, and so is rest. 
What oneness it gives to life ! what swift di- 
vorce from various entanglements — ^just this 
simple purpose, to please Jesus ! 

Also personal contact with the personal 
Christ is inward and unwasting joy, and so is 
rest. Conscience includes these things : a per- 
ception of the right and wrong in choices, a 



63 

feeling that the right ought to be chosen and 
the wrong shunned, complacency in the right, 
displacency in the wrong, and such delight in 
such choice of right as that we consent to it 
and act it out. And now Christ is the right 
and true and good. We perceive that choice 
of him is right choice ; we feel we ought to 
choose him. We do choose him, and then our 
souls are filled with the most restful joy. 

Art thou weary, art thou languid, 
Art thou sore distressed ? 
"Come to me," saith One, " and coming, 
Be at rest." 

Hath he marks to lead me to him, 
If he be my guide ? 
' ' In his feet and hands are wound-prints, 
And his side." 

Is there diadem as monarch 
That his brow adorns ? 
'• Yea, a crown in very surety, 
But of thorns." 

If I find him, if I follow. 
What his guerdon here ? 
** Many a sorrow, many a labor, 
Many a tear." 

If I still hold closely to him, 
What hath he at last ? 
"Sorrow vanished, labor ended, 
Jordan passed." 



64 

If I ask him to receive me, 
Will he say me nay? 
"Not till earth, and not till heaven 
Pass avi^ay." 

Finding, foUov^ring, keeping, struggling, 
Is he sure to bless ? 
•'Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, 
Answer, Yes." 

X 
NO CONDEMNATION 

THIS is the believer's state, that he is under 
no condemnation. 
You will remember that after the disastrous 
conflict with the Phihstines, in the plain of 
Esdraelon, Saul, the first king of Israel, was 
slain upon the mount of Gilboa. You will re- 
member that David was afterward crowned 
king at Hebron. You will remember that Ish- 
bosheth, the son of Saul, refusing to submit to 
David, set up a rival kingdom whose capital 
was Mahanaim. You will remember that then, 
as was natural, for a good while there was 
clashing between the rival kingdoms, but David 
waxed stronger and stronger, and his oppo- 
nents weaker and weaker. At length Ishbo- 
sheth, the rival king, was slain ; the sceptre of 
his house was broken and David became mas- 
ter alone. 



65 

You will remember, also, the tender love 
that in the vanished years had bound together 
the souls of David and Jonathan, the son of 
Saul. Jonathan had met his death, but Da- 
vid's love for him was immortal. So now, 
when the crash of war had ceased, and David 
was seated on the throne his Lord had prom- 
ised him, with the old love for Jonathan in his 
heart, David, looking anxiously around, says, 
* ' Is there yet any that is left of the house of 
Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jona- 
than' s sake ? ' ' Then at last it is found that 
there is a man living that is a son of Jonathan, 
by the name of Mephibosheth. 

But Mephibosheth is by no means a perfect 
person. Long ago, when he was but five years 
old, the news had come of the tragic overthrow 
and death of Saul and Jonathan at Jezreel ; in 
her fright the nurse had caught the child in 
her arms and had sped away. But also in her 
fright and flight she had dropped the boy, and 
henceforth he had been maimed and lame. 
Mephibosheth was lame in both his feet. Me- 
phibosheth, the son of Jonathan, was a halting 
cripple. 

But Mephibosheth was in Jonathan, in the 
sense that he was the son of David's lifelong 
friend. So David the king, because Mephib- 
osheth was in a most real sense in Jonathan, 

£ 



66 



brought Mephibosheth into his own royal pal- 
ace, restored him his confiscated estate ; and 
thenceforth to him, as the constant resident in 
his own palace, he did the utmost honor that 
an Oriental king could do another : bade him 
sit and eat at his own kingly table, took him 
into the most confiding intimacy. 

All the time Mephibosheth was lame in both 
his feet; and all the time Mephibosheth was 
but a halting cripple. Think of that a mo- 
ment. Though Mephibosheth was a cripple, 
the palace was his home and the king's table 
was his place of daily honor. 

During the war a gentleman, a lawyer, by 
giving his time and money to caring for the 
soldiers, so nearly impoverished himself that he 
felt obliged to say to himself that he could, for 
a time at least, give no more until he had re- 
paired his fortunes. He had a son Charlie, an 
officer in the army at the front. 

One day while he was busily engaged, a per- 
son entered the room ; and, although he would 
not allow himself to look up, the lawyer could 
not help catching a ghmpse of the soldier's 
well-known uniform. Well, as the story goes, 
keeping his resolution he steeled his heart and 
looked down more resolutely at his papers as 
the man, with slow and faltering steps, crossed 
over to the table and stood before him. But 



67 

he would take no notice of the intruder ; and 
the man, feeling in his pockets, exclaimed, * ' I 
did have a letter for you. ' ' At last, beneath 
the face of the lawyer busily engaged with his 
papers, the pale, wasted hand laid a letter. A 
glance showed the writing to be that of the 
lawyer' s own dear son. He hastily opened the 
letter, which ran thus : * ' Dear father : the poor 
fellow who leaves you this was badly wounded 
in battle, and has just been discharged from 
the hospital to go home to die. Will you take 
care of him, and be kind to him, and do what- 
ever you can for him, for Charlie's sake?" It 
is enough to say that what was asked to be done 
for Charlie's sake was done. 

Yes, the poor, wounded soldier was very rag- 
ged, with the hospital stench upon him, and 
perhaps uncouth and uncultivated, and with no 
such manners as the lawyer was wont to have 
in his house and at his table. But do you not 
see that the poor fellow was, in a most real 
sense, in Charlie, and that therefore all his 
grime and filth and possible coarseness went 
for nothing, and he became, notwithstanding, 
a most cherished inmate of the lawyer's home? 
Think of that ! notwithstanding all these things, 
embosomed in that home. 

Do you not see what I have been trying to 
make plain by these meagre illustrations? 



68 



They are meagre — I grant they are — full of 
places where the analogy will not hold, because 
no earthly thing is glorious enough to set forth 
the radiant, spiritual verity, because God is in- 
finitely better and more loving than David ever 
could be, or than this father that tried to steel 
his heart. 

But God never steels his heart. ''For God 
so loved the world that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever beHeveth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
But do you not see what I have been trying to 
make plain ? You are a moral cripple. You 
are lame in both your spiritual feet. You are 
wounded and spiritually sick, and with the foul 
stench of sin upon you. You are conscious of 
another law in your members warring against 
the law of your mind. You find a law that 
when you would do good, evil is present with 
you. You are then brought into captivity to 
the law of sin, which is in your members. You 
stumble. You faint. You fall. You are in a 
terrible wrestle with evil. Sometimes you are 
overthrown, and evil is triumphant. Often is 
wrung from you the almost despairing cry, * ' O 
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ? ' ' 

But notwithstanding the fact that you are a 
moral cripple, lame in both feet; notwith- 



69 

standing the weakness and stench of sin upon 
you ; notwithstanding the fact that sin so often 
masters you, and you falter and fail ; notwith- 
standing your wretchedness and the cutting feel- 
ing of failure, and the slight apparent growth in 
grace ; still by faith, standing in Christ Jesus, 
you have entered into a most wonderful spiritual 
state in him ; still for you, struggling, fearing, 
fainting, now making a little headway, and now 
stepping so sadly back, for you, imperfect as you 
are, and only at the very best partially sancti- 
fied as you are, there is therefore now no con- 
demnation, because you are in Christ Jesus. 

The believer is Mephibosheth, with patri- 
mony more than restored, and an abiding 
place in the palace, notwithstanding his crip- 
pled feet. The believer is the private in the 
officer Charhe's home, notwithstanding he is 
only a private, and with all the wounds and 
scars and weakness of battle on him. For, for 
the believer Christ has done everything. 

* * Ye are complete in Christ. ' ' 

For the behever Christ has met and com- 
pletely mastered every claim that even the 
exactness of divine holiness can discover. 
Being in Christ, the poor, faltering, struggling 
believer passes into and stays in that wonder- 
ful state — 

''No condemnation." 



70 

XI 
THE CLOSED AND THE OPEN GATES 

RIGHTEOUSNESS is right being, the get- 
ting set in right relations. There are 
two ways looking toward entrance into such 
righteousness. There is the way, frequently 
attempted, always faihng, of the closed gates. 
It is the way by the law. ' * But that no man 
is justified by the law in the sight of God it is 
evident. ' ' This way by the law is the way of 
the closed gates, because it is a way too late ; 
it never begins early enough. 

Think a moment. This law is for the regu- 
lation of the personal life ; it demands that, all 
the time, each one of us should be, in thought, 
in motive, in volition, precisely what he ought 
to be. This law is for the regulation of our 
social life; it demands that in all our inter- 
course with others we should be exactly right. 
Also, this law sways scepter over our duty to 
God ; it demands that toward him we should 
unceasingly hold, to the last gossamer of limit, 
just the reverence, trust, love, obedience, we 
should. 

But who has done it ? Take even so genial 
a nature as that of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
This is what he says : * * The first unequivocal 



71 

act of wrong that has left its trace in my mem- 
ory was this : refusing a small favor asked of 
me — nothing more than telling what had hap- 
pened at school one morning. No matter who 
asked it ; but there were circumstances which 
saddened and awed me. I had no heart to 
speak ; I faltered some miserable, perhaps pet- 
ulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of 
life was lost. What remorse followed I need 
not tell. Then and there, to the best of my 
knowledge, I first consciously took sin by the 
hand and turned my back on duty. Yet, if I 
had but won that first battle ! ' ' 

Is there not here a specimen window into 
everybody's experience? The fairest life is 
conscious of some flaw of failure toward the law. 
Ah me, not only the first battle, but many 
since, has everybody lost ! This law which 
grasps the self in the self's self, the self in re- 
lation to others, the self in relation to God — 
who has been toward this law precisely, and all 
the time, obedient ? And the trouble is that, 
seeking to get into right being and right rela- 
tions by way of the law, you are too late ; you 
have not begun soon enough ; you are already 
confronted by a broken law. And so, the 
gates of a justifying righteousness along its 
path are closed. Besides, this way by the law 
of getting into right being, right relations, is a 



72 

way of the closed gates because, the law being 
broken, you cannot mend it. 

The empire of this law includes yourself, 
your relations to others, your relations to God. 
Suppose this were possible. Here is a day ; in 
that circle of the hours twenty-four, you have 
perfectly kept the law, as toward yourself, as 
toward others, as toward God. But here is 
another day. In this day you failed. There 
was an allowed envious feehng in this day; 
there was a bitter word which set its bhster on 
your lip ; there was a want of holy reverence 
and loving trust toward God. Yet in that first 
supposed day you did perfectly. But what are 
you going to do with this bad day? Was it 
possible for you on that day when, by the sup- 
position, you wrought so well to do more than 
you ought ? By the supposition, on that day 
you touched the limit of the law. But did you, 
on that day, go beyond the Umit ? Can you 
go beyond the limit ? Can you be more than 
perfect? But here is this bad day — yet you 
can accumulate no surplusage of perfection 
by which to piece out its defects. Again the 
gates close. Having broken the law, I can- 
not gather moral capital and strength with 
which to mend it. 

But also, this way by the law of getting into 
right being, right relations, is the way of the 



73 

closed gates because the law can tolerate noth- 
ing but an exact obedience. 

Some of you made an easy voyage to Europe 
the last summer ; you sailed over the wide sea. 
You were able to sail over it because of the 
exactness of law. What was that water you 
sailed over ? Why, it is the union of hydro- 
gen and oxygen in the proportion of two vol- 
umes of hydrogen to one volume of oxygen. 
In that proportion, always in that proportion, 
always exactly in that proportion. Did the 
proportion vary to the shade of a shadow 
there had been such explosion as had instantly 
brought back to this world of ours ' ' chaos and 
old night. ' ' 

You hang on the exactness of law. And in 
the spiritual realm there must be exactness of 
law also. For what is the moral law of God ? 
It is the expression of the divine nature. That 
perfect divine nature can only express itself in 
a perfect law. And a perfect law can only 
receive and accept the answer of a perfect 
obedience. 

But, confessedly, I have not rendered the 
answer of a perfect obedience. Yet God, 
along the way of his law, can accept no other 
than a perfect obedience. **He that doeth 
them shall live in them. ' ' 

So, when I think of the perfect God, ex- 



74 

pressing himself in perfect law, and only able, 
by reason of his very perfectness, to receive an 
exact obedience — the gates toward justification 
by way of the law close hopelessly again. 

Then I turn, thankfully and joyfully, to the 
way of the open gates. * ' Therefore, being 
justified by faith, we have peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. ' ' 

A tender scene comes to my memory. It 
was years ago. Mr. Van Meter was superin- 
tendent of the Howard Mission. He had 
come over to Brooklyn with some waifs he had 
gathered from the streets, to see if he could 
not find homes for them. There was one little 
fellow — nobody knew who were his father and 
mother — for whom no home opened. Mr. 
Van Meter stood the httle fellow on the pulpit- 
cushion, and flinging his arms around him, 
said : ' * Here is one of the Lord Christ' s little 
children ; has nobody a home for him ? ' ' 
There was no answer. Several times the ques- 
tion was repeated. Still there was no response. 
At last a childless gentleman, rising in the 
back of the church, and stretching out his 
arms, and exclaiming, ' ' I have got a home for 
him," came forward and clasped the boy to 
his breast. At once for that street waif there 
was a mighty change. Hitherto shelterless, 
clotheless, foodless, schooUess, he was nowim- 



75 

mediately supplied, because this gentleman had 
all these things, and, accepting the little fellow 
for his own, at once conferred upon him shel- 
ter, clothing, food, school. 

Many times this scene has come to me as a 
perfect parable of redemption. The gates 
which sin has closed to our own attempt stand 
welcomingly open when we turn toward and 
accept by faith the proffered and justifying 
righteousness of Christ. ' ' Ye are complete in 
him." 

Let me steadily turn from the shut gates of 
my own poor tryings at a justifying righteous- 
ness, and thankfully and immediately enter the 
open gates of a justifying faith in Christ, and 
so have peace with God. 

XII 
DRAWN— DELIVERED 

I GOT new vision recently of the way our 
Lord dehvers. I was studying the mean- 
ing of that word ''deliver," in that clause of 
the prayer our Lord taught us, ' ' But deliver 
us from evil. ' ' I found that word * ' deliver ' ' 
has pecuhar significance ; it means to draw to 
one's self, and so to deUver. I think that very 
beautiful and helpful. 



76 

I remember a long tussle I had with a man 
once, seeking to deliver him from the thrall of 
drink. I found I was able to do it in just this 
way, by drawing him to myself. 

The man, a dear friend of mine, came to me 
and, in effect, said: "This fight against this 
appetite of mine is terrible ; it is harder at cerr 
tain times than at others ; every now and then 
there is an awful access of craving ; my will is 
very weak; your will against this appetite is 
unmanacled and strong; now I need your 
stronger will to range itself with my weaker 
one, and especially in the seasons of critical 
temptation, when I am seized with desire al- 
most irresistible. I want you to let me come 
to you, sit with you, talk to you, somehow 
shelter myself in your stronger will, and so with 
you I think I can better fight away this tyran- 
nous and hungry passion. ' * 

*'Well," I said, "come; come at anytime, 
by day or night, and I will stand with you, talk 
to you, pray with you, in every way I can think 
of fight with you this fiend of drink. ' ' 

So he used to come every now and then, 
and we would have together a grand quarrel 
with his enemy. 

I remember one long summer day. He had 
come to me in the very early morning in the 
throes of a tremendous contention. " Let us 



77 

go out into the air, ' ' I said. We hired a car- 
riage and set out for a long drive. Every now 
and then we would pass some saloon. In the 
agony of his hankering the sight would be too 
much for him. He would order the driver to 
stop and insist on entering. It was useless for 
me to remonstrate. 

But there was one thing I could do, and I 
did it. I went into the saloon with him. I 
implored and threatened the saloon-keeper. 
I saw to it that my friend got nothing stronger 
than soda-water, or something of the sort. 
Then I could persuade him to resume the 
ride. 

So the long day spent itself. As the shad- 
ows of the evening began to gather, his terrible 
desire began to lessen, and finally it passed. 
He was delivered ; contact with my stronger 
will, stronger as regards this special matter, 
had prevailed. For many a year thereafter my 
friend was free with a great deliverance. 

I thought of all this when I came upon the 
peculiar significance of this ' ' deliver ' ' in the 
prayer our Lord taught us. The prayer really 
is, * * O Lord, deliver us from the evil one by 
drawing us to thyself ' ' 

That is the real and true method of deliver- 
ance. An artist is delivered from ugliness by 
his love of beauty. A decent person is deliv- 



78 

ered from foulness by his love of purity. A 
scholar is deUvered from ignorance by his love 
of knowledge. An industrious man is deliv- 
ered from idleness and laggardness by his love 
for his work and duty. The best way to fight 
a thing is to get enthralled with love for its 
opposite. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnation of 
everything high, holy, noble, beautiful, lovely. 
He is strong in will for all these and against 
their opposites, and he waits with welcome for 
me, with his intimate friendship. He calls me 
to himself by the gracious drawings and per- 
suasions of his Spirit. He will stand on my 
side as against temptations, girding my weaker 
will with his stronger. He will bind me to 
himself in an indissoluble union. And thus 
drawing me to himself, he will give deliver- 
ance. 

This is the practical suggestion to which I 
come. The best way to get rid of and bring 
disaster to a special temptation, to this and 
that plying of the evil one, is not so much to 
stand against it in the girded prowess of your 
own will, as to fly to Christ, shelter yourself in 
him, consecrate yourself to him, let yourself be 
drawn to him. Then, being thus in him, you 
are somehow mighty with his might. Drawn 
to him, he hfts you into deUverance. 



79 

XIII 
THE FRAGRANCE OF SERVICE 

MARY lovingly drenched the Lord with the 
costly spikenard, and — the house was 
filled with the odor of the ointment. How 
beautiful that is ! 

You see, such sweet and gracious ministry 
could not be confined. Her service terminated 
ostensibly on Jesus, but it did more and went 
farther ; it made an atmosphere of fragrance. 

It seems to me this exquisite incident is a 
very real and true parable of hearty service 
Christward, anywhere and always. Service to- 
ward our Lord not only serves our Lord, it 
diffuses fragrance in addition. 

There is certainly this perfumed effect re- 
active in the person serving, the fragrance of 
an increased love. 

That is our too perpetual Christian plaint — 
we have so httle love. **0h, if we loved 
more ! " we are constantly saying, " how much 
easier everything in the Christian life would 
be ! " And what we say so much is true 
utterly. The more we love, the easier will be 
the achieving of every Christian thing to which 
we should set our hand. 

But we make steadily one radical mistake. 



8o 



We vainly and vaguely wait for love, hoping 
that, vaguely waiting thus, somehow and from 
somewhere, the tides of it will flow in upon us 
and whelm us. 

Here is a tender bit I came on once. A 
Cincinnati paper says : ' * In a pottery factory 
here there is a workman who had one small 
invalid child at home. He wrought at his 
trade with exemplary fidelity, being always in 
the shop at the opening of the day. He man- 
aged, however, to bear each evening to the 
bedside of the 'wee lad,' as he called him, a 
flower, a bit of ribbon, or a fragment of crim- 
son glass, indeed, anything that would lie out 
on the white counterpane and give color to the 
room. He was a quiet, unsentimental man, 
but never went home at night without some- 
thing that would make the wan face light up 
with joy at his return. He never said to a 
living soul that he loved that boy so much. 
Still he went on patiently loving him, and by 
and by he moved that whole shop into posi- 
tively real but unconscious fellowship with him. 
The workmen made curious little jars and cups 
upon their wheels, and painted diminutive 
pictures down their sides before they stuck 
them in the corners of the kiln at burning 
time. One brought some fruit in the bulge of 
his apron, and another engravings in a rude 



8i 



scrap-book. Not one of them whispered a 
word, for this solemn thing was not to be 
talked about. They put them in the old man's 
hat, where he found them. He understood all 
about it, and, believe it or not, cynics, as you 
will, but it is a fact that the entire pottery full 
of men, of rather coarse fibre by nature, grew 
quiet as the months drifted, becoming gentle 
and kind, and some dropped swearing as the 
weary look on the patient fellow- worker' s face 
told them beyond mistake that the inevitable 
shadow was drawing nearer. Every day now 
some one did a piece of work for him and put 
it on the sanded plank to dry, so that he could 
come later and go earHer. So, when the bell 
tolled and the little coffin came out of the 
lonely door, right around the corner, out of 
sight, there stood a hundred stalwart working- 
men from the pottery with their clean clothes 
on, most of whom gave a half-day's time for 
the privilege of taking part in the simple pro- 
cession and following to the grave that small 
burden of a child which probably not one had 
ever seen. ' ' 

Now, is it not the most evident of things 
that the tender love, both of that father and of 
his sympathetic fellow-workmen, for the ''wee 
lad," grew and greatened, as both father and 
fellow-workmen did for the Httle child ? Every 



82 



flower, bit of ribbon, fragment of crimson glass 
the father carried to the child, every curious 
little jar or cup the workmen fashioned and 
painted and sent to the little fellow, within 
themselves started an increased love for him. 

Here is instance of the practical philosophy 
of life ', the more they didj the more they loved. 
And can you not see how, as they did more 
and so loved more, their hands would get 
defter and quicker in sweet serving ? 

Why, it is plain enough. If Mary, simply 
meditating beautiful ministry, had waited, in a 
vague way, for more love to impel her, she had 
never done the service beautiful and bountiful. 
But, already loving, she swiftly did the gracious 
thing which love suggested, and an increased 
fragrance of love diffused itself, reacting through 
all her heart. 

This is the practical philosophy for hfe ; in 
order to love more, do more ; and so, and so 
only, will love be more. 

But not only did this service of Mary have 
reactive fragrance within herself; it had out- 
ward and permeating fragrance toward others. 
For one thing, it set a perfumed example for 
others. How through all the ages have fra- 
grant deeds of service for the Lord got im- 
pulse and sweet contagion from this ministry 
of Mary's. 



83 

And for another thing, this perfumed min- 
istry of Mary shamed Judas. And Judas ought 
to be shamed. Never you mind what Judas 
thinks or says. It is not worth minding. Sim- 
ply do you the loving deeds for Christ that 
your love prompts, and you shall best manage 
Judas by stifling him in the rare fragrances 
your ministries shall fling off. He may carp 
and criticise. But Judas can never stay nor 
permanently damage the redolences of loving 
deeds. 

XIV 

THE SAFE DEPOSIT 

RECALL a time of financial panic. Values 
are faUing; credit is shaking; notes are 
being called in wherever possible ; unexpected 
demands for payments are being made ; re- 
sources are failing ; great business enterprises 
are wearing cloudy aspect ; worst of all, the 
banks are being touched ; this one has gone 
under, that one, the other ; men meet in anx- 
ious, sometimes in excited, groups ; this man 
has a deposit in a bank which for the time has 
refused him payment ; that man, that other. 
How anxious and drawn the faces of men are 
getting ! But here is a man — his walk is leis- 
urely, his face is calm, his eye serene. He has 



84 

a deposit in a bank, a very large deposit. But 
he is utterly persuaded of the financial sound- 
ness of his bank. Somehow he knows his pre- 
cious deposit is in safe keeping. He is not 
fearful, agitated, questioning. 

Do you know, my friend, such illustration 
tells the precise significance of this great scrip- 
ture? — ''For I know whom I have believed, 
and am persuaded that he is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto him against that 
day. ' ' The words, * * which I have committed 
unto him," mean exactly the deposit entrusted. 
One would think the apostle might be down- 
hearted, distrustful, questioning. He is a pris- 
oner in Rome the second time. He is not 
captive with his captivity comparatively cush- 
ioned, as he was the first time. He was much 
dependent on companionship naturally. But 
now he is almost entirely alone, and, by some 
of his loudest friends even basely deserted. 
He is cold, this aged, imprisoned apostle. How 
pathetic his request for his travehng cloak he 
had somewhere left behind him ! He is, in the 
loneliness of his hard imprisonment, hungry for 
occupation. He would have Timothy hasten 
to bring him his books and parchments. He 
is set upon by evil plotters. Alexander, the 
coppersmith, has laid many bad charges against 
him. He is denied all legal help, must stand 



85 

of supporters utterly bereft, as he argues his 
own case before the imperial tribunal. 

One might suppose the apostle, gripped in 
such circumstances, would somewhat lose heart 
and fear and fail in faith. But he does not 
in the least. He is serene and strong of heart. 
He has made precious deposit. He is utterly- 
certain that deposit will be, to the last degree 
and against all contingency, safeguarded. How 
his unquivering confidence sounds out as he 
lays his heart open in the steady words : ' ' For 
the which cause I also suffer these things; 
nevertheless I am not ashamed ; for I know 
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that 
he is able to safeguard the deposit I have en- 
trusted to him against that day." 

Well, let us think a Httle. Jesus Christ will 
allow us also to make deposit in him. We may 
make deposit in Jesus Christ of the treasure of 
our personal salvation. Indeed, we must. My 
friend, toward personal salvation, in ourselves 
we are bankrupt. This treasure of our personal 
salvation can be safeguarded for us only as we 
do make deposit of it in Jesus Christ. Analyze 
a moment a single action. There is the out- 
ward action itself, the deed which flows from 
our finger tips. But this outward embodiment 
of the deed is not the whole of the action ; be- 
hind the action is the volition, the willing to 



86 



put the deed forth, that which moves toward 
and determines the act of the hand. But this 
voMtion behind the action is not the whole of 
it j for back of the action and the voHtion are 
the motives which urge toward the wiUing and 
the doing. They are those forces in us, spring- 
ing from the desirability of the contemplated 
deed itself and the sort and quality of moral 
nature of which we have become possessed, 
which press the will into volition toward the 
external deed. 

But neither are motives, nor volition, nor 
external deed, the whole of action. Behind 
them all, and the mother of them all, is the 
conception of the deed in thought ; the initial 
idea of it, somehow rising in us as the bubbles 
rise out of the depths of lake or pool. These 
four elements have entered, and must enter, 
into every deed which clothes itself with the 
visibility of finished action. 

And now, this fact is never to be forgotten — 
the empire of the holy law of God is not con- 
fined merely to an action which has at last 
come to bloom out of idea, motive, voUtion ; 
but it also sways its stringent scepter over the 
entire process of an action, from external deed, 
along the whole line back to and including the 
initial thought of it. The holy law of God de- 
mands that the external deed adjust itself with 



87 

its demand of righteousness, and also, pushing 
back its claim, demands that volition, motive, 
beginning thought, be perfectly righteous too. 
Suppose a man have sinful idea and sinful mo- 
tive and refuse to yield volition to them, and 
so stops the farther pushing to bloom of a sin- 
ful action. He has not sinned in act, but he 
has sinned in desiring motive, and in beginning 
suggestion. He is not so sinful as he would 
have been had he allowed volition to complete 
idea and motive in the full-blown action. But 
in the stern and searching vision of the holy 
law of God he is still sinning in his thought and 
in his desire as well. 

The Missouri River rises near the boundary 
between Montana and Idaho, among the Rocky 
Mountains. But it rises within the jurisdiction 
of the United States. And that jurisdiction 
extends along all the mighty river's flowing 
course. So a deed rises within the jurisdiction 
of the holy law of God. And that holy law 
demands that from its beginning, along the 
entire course of it, through motive, through 
volition, till it flows out into the consummated 
action, that action be a righteous one. Such 
is the analysis of but a single action. 

Now multiply this single action by all the 
deeds of which our Hves are full, and estimate, 
at least a httle, the reach and rigor of the holy 



88 



law over us, and let us confess ourselves, as we 
must confess ourselves, sinners in its awful 
presence. ' ' Now we know that what things 
soever the law saith, it saith to them who are 
under the law : that every mouth may be 
stopped, and all the world may become guilty 
before God. Therefore by the deeds of the 
law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight : 
for by the law is the knowledge of sin. ' ' My 
friend, frankly, I see no hope for us save in 
the atoning Jesus Christ. I turn to him and 
make deposit of my personal salvation in him. 
He has satisfied the law and made it honor- 
able. He is the fulfilhng of the law for right- 
eousness to every one beheving. I dare make 
deposit of my personal salvation in Jesus Christ. 
I am sure he will safeguard it. I know whom 
I have believed. I beseech you, make deposit 
in him also. What you invest in him can never 
come to bankruptcy. 

XV 
THE REGARDING CHRIST 

VERY precious is any disclosure of the per- 
sonal Christ. I have been waiting lately 
before that scene of the disciples straining at 
their oars against the storm driving down upon 



89 

them, there on the sea of Galilee, and of the 
treatment of them by the Lord, and it seemed 
to me as though our Lord stood out amidst it 
all in a kind of fresh vision. Let me tell of 
one of the helpful hghts in which I seemed to 
see him. The personal Christ reveals himself 
there as the regarding One. 

I came upon this pathetic incident the other 
day. It was first published in a Scotch school 
journal. A gentleman, when a boy, had greatly 
loved the game of cricket, nor in his later 
years had he lost love for it. But he had gone 
blind. He had a boy, however, who shared 
his father's enthusiasm, and who was a mem- 
ber of the school team. When his boy played, 
the father, though bhnd, was always present, 
anxiously noting the fortunes of the game as 
friends described to him the going on of it. 
The father died suddenly. But the next week 
the boy, though most tenderly attached to his 
father, took his place in the school team. He 
played the game through as, expert though he 
was, even he had never played before. When 
the game was done he went to the umpire. 
'* How did I play ? " he asked with intense in- 
terest. ''Never better. You outdid your- 
self," was the reply. ''Because," the boy 
said, as he turned away, ' ' it was the first time 
my father ever saw me bat." The boy felt 



90 

that death had opened his father's eyes, in- 
stead of the more completely closing them, and 
that, looking down from the upper sphere, the 
father, for the first time, had vision of him at 
the manly game both himself and his father 
loved. And the thought was to the boy the 
utmost stimulus, and naturally. 

Whether it be true that those who have 
passed on before us are able from the celestial 
heights to regard us as we do and endure in 
this ''low- though ted spot which we call earth," 
it is not given us to know. But it is as sure as 
sure can be that the Christ who met and mas- 
tered death in glorious resurrection and ascen- 
sion, both can and does. How exquisitely it 
comes out in the narrative of these disciples 
captured by the storm ! The five loaves and 
the two fishes had been superabundant feast 
for the five thousand men besides the women 
and the children. The multitude, awed and 
delighted at the miracle, would force the crown 
of a merely earthly dominion upon the head of 
Christ. The disciples are smitten with the 
contagion of the purpose. Not such dominion 
will the Christ be lifted to. He will be king 
only by the spiritual suffrages of hearts. He 
sends the multitude away. He constrains the 
disciples to take boat and row diagonally across 
the lake to Bethsaida Juhas, where he will meet 



91 

them. Meantime, he spends the hours in 
prayerful vigil upon the mountain. The dis- 
ciples push off, and, in the middle of the sea, are 
hurtled at by the sudden storm. But neither 
the storm, nor their straining at the oar against 
it, is obscured to the Master's notice. In 
certain moods, to me, the most shining words 
in all the Scripture are just these, ''And he 
saw them toihng in rowing." ''Distressed," 
the Greek is, panting, breathless, with the tre- 
mendous toil of attempting to make head 
against so terrible a tempest. But both storm 
and toil he saw and noted. 

If any one would have further certainty that 
he is still the regarding Christ, though now 
unseen by us and parted from us, as to bodily 
appearing, by death and resurrection and as- 
cension and seat upon the universal throne, 
turn to the first chapters of the Revelation and 
mark how, to the seven churches, the burden 
of the messages of him before whose immeas- 
urable glory St. John fell as dead is still the 
burden of particular notice and regard. To 
the church at Ephesus : "I know thy works 
and thy labor and thy patience." To the 
church in Smyrna : "I know thy works and 
tribulation and poverty." To the church in 
Pergamos : "I know thy works and where thou 
dwellest, even where Satan's seat is." To the 



92 

church in Thyatira : "I know thy works and 
service and charity and faith and thy patience. ' ' 
To the church in Sardis : ' ' Thou hast a few 
names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled 
their garments ; and they shall walk wdth me in 
white, for they are worthy." To the church 
in Philadelphia : ' ' I know thy works : behold, I 
have set before thee an open door." To the 
church of the Laodiceans : "I know thy works, 
that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would 
thou wert cold or hot. * * Though in highest 
heaven, still is he the regarding Christ. 

Oh, receive the fact for cheer, for stimulus, 
for careful judgment of the self. Here you are, 
standing at the oar of the daily toil, or seeking 
to make head against some difficulty preventing 
gracious service, or with hand lapsed from the 
oar of religious duty letting the wild world 
storm drift you how it will, or caught in the 
devastating gusts of sorrow, with wrecked home 
and with those to whom your hearts cling 
dashed from you out of sight — it is false that 
you are the sport of chance. It is false that 
no Divine heart beats for you. It is false that 
your lapse from duty is unnoticed. It is false 
that you are the merely storm driven thing you 
sometimes fear you are. He sees you nobly 
toiling in rowing. He sees you as clearly if 
you ignobly refuse to toil and are letting the 



93 

tempest carry you anywhither. This is his word 
to you, as really as it was to those bestead dis- 
ciples — **It is I," the regarding Christ. 

XVI 
A SPECIMEN 

THERE is a great value in a specimen. A 
specimen is a lens through which you can 
descry and get notion of the whole class of 
which the specimen is part and instance. 

The other day I was in the house of a friend 
who is interested in a Montana gold mine. 
He was showing me some specimens of the sort 
of gold that mine produces ; thin flake gold, 
bunched nugget gold. 

It is not necessary for that friend of mine, in 
order to know its sort, to examine every particle 
of gold that has been mined or that will be, 
yonder in that patch of Montana where the 
mine is placed. A thorough study of these 
specimens is sufficient. They are windows 
into the whole mine. There is vast value in a 
specimen. 

What is the real gold for hfe ? It is the un- 
quivering and accepted certainty, notwith- 
standing everything which may seem to make 
against it, that God loves. 



94 

One says most truly, ' ' Nothing is more im- 
portant in religious thought and life than a true 
conception of the character of God. Little as 
we may think of it, every day is bitter or hope- 
ful, every duty commonplace or inspiring, every 
sacrifice irksome or joyous — in short, every 
day's work and experience full of low and 
selfish meanings, or of noble and divine mean- 
ings, according to the practical thought of God 
which we are carrying about with us day by 
day. ' ' 

Now the gold for life is the certainty that God 
loves. Even as Wordsworth sings : 

One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only, an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 

I have been dehghting myself recently with 
this specimen of the divine love : '' Now Jesus 
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ' ' 

Look at this specimen from these two angles, 
the angle ''though" and the angle ''since." 

Though Jesus loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus he allowed Lazarus to sicken and 
to die. Just now Jesus is absent on one of his 



95 

journeys. He is two days away at Bethabara 
over in Perea. Palestine is the place of sud- 
den, sharp, frequently fatal fevers. One of 
these smites Lazarus while Jesus is away. 
Without any intervention on the part of Jesus, 
and though he loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus, he allows the furious fever to run 
its swift, consuming course, and in that home 
which Jesus loved, Lazarus lies dead. 

You need not go very far, anywhere, to match 
that picture at this moment : a home which 
Jesus loved, and yet with one of the loved ones 
lying dead in it. Here is a wail that came to 
me the other day from such a home. She was 
a young wife, a most earnest Christian. Her- 
self and her husband had just made a home 
together. Then her Lazarus was smitten. ' ' I 
am unhappy, miserable," she writes. '*In 
view of his triumphant death I am surprised 
and disappointed in myself, that I am so mis- 
erable. I didn't know it was possible for so 
much suffering to be crowded into three short 
months. I am ambitionless, powerless, crushed, 
unwilling, and apparently unable, to take up the 
work of life again. It is so much harder to Hve 
than to die." 

Though Jesus loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus, he did not immediately answer 
the prayer of the sisters. 



96 

I do not think that in all the history of 
prayer, nor in all the gathered liturgies of it, 
can be found a prayer, more truly prayer, than 
this which the anxious and watching sisters dis- 
patched to the absent Jesus, ' ' Lord, he whom 
thou lovest is sick." What trust in it — his 
love reason enough for quick reply and inter- 
ference. What submission in it — never so 
much as hint as to method of answer ; all that 
left to his better wisdom. What clinging in it 
— our arms are short, it is on thine arm we 
confidently rely. What delicate persuasion in 
it — it is enough that thy love should be re- 
minded that he whom thou lovest is in sore 
need of thee. 

But though, I doubt not, the messenger 
hurried with the prayer, and pressed the two 
days' journey separating the Lord from Beth- 
any into less than one, the Lord does not 
hurry with his answer. Yes, and you can 
match that picture also still : the Lord wait- 
ing yonder in Bethabara, beyond the Jordan, 
in Perea, when we so sorely need him here 
and now in our Bethany. He does not always 
hurry, you know. ' ' In the fulness of time ' ' 
he came to the world. In the fullness of time 
he will come to the sisters of Bethany and to 
us. It is better so. What seems to us delay 
is but the ripening of his purpose. 



97 

Though Jesus loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus, he left the sisters to the regretful 
bewailing of the human * * if. " ' ' Lord, if thou 
hadst been here, my brother had not died. ' ' 
They both said it, meeting at last the appar- 
ently laggard Jesus. If, if — ah me, how often 
we must now say it, when some sorrow whelms, 
and we cannot help feehng it might have been 
hindered from flooding us if only we ourselves, 
or some one else, had done otherwise. This 
*'if" in the heart and on the lip, there is 
nothing commoner, more trying. 

But turn now to look at this specimen of the 
divine love from the other angle, *' since." 

Since our Lord loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus, he waited for benignant purpose. 

Tell me, my friend, looking through the 
whole story, do you not plainly see that every 
way the waiting was better and more loving 
than had been the swifter coming? Ah, study 
your specimen from this other angle. 

Since our Lord loved, what helps for faith 
his waiting yielded at the last ! This is the 
meaning of Jesus to the sisters, to the disciples, 
to you and me. It is as though he said : "I 
would have you trust me ; even in the darkest 
hour let not your trust fail. That it may not, 
let me disclose myself to you. Behold me, I 
am the resurrection and the life. ' ' And so the 

G 



98 

dead Lazarus rises at his call, and Jesus is seen 
to be the resurrection and the life. What 
shining help for faith burns against the black 
background of that waiting ! 

Since our Lord loved, what evidence he 
yielded us that though our dead pass into 
death they do not pass beyond his power. He 
waited and let Lazarus die and be buried, that 
he might show, by recalHng him from death, as 
he could in no other way, that even death was 
thrall to him and not master over him, and that 
our dead never get beyond his mastery. 

Since our Lord loved Martha and her sister 
and Lazarus, he gave them better than they 
had ever dared to pray for or to dream. They 
prayed that he would not let Lazarus further 
sicken. His overmatching answer was, Lazams 
risen from the dead. 

Yes. Here is a specimen. If I must look 
at it from the angle ''though," let me not for- 
get to look at it from the angle ' ' since. ' ' And 
the hght from the ' ' since ' ' scatters the darkness 
gathering about the ''though." God loves. 
And as I can plainly see it in this specimen, 
such love as his will make all the strange and 
hard things plain at last ; will cause it to be 
seen that the strange, hard things even are, 
after all, but the better evidences and oppor- 
tunities of his love. 



99 

XVII 
CONCERNING PRAYER 

THERE are two reasons, my friend, among 
multitudes of others, why it seems to me 
you should be certain that prayer is a valid and 
achieving force. 

One reason is, that it is not conceivable that 
God would steadily cheat you. 

I know a place where every May and June 
the choir of the birds sets itself at singing in a 
way most ravishing. It is precisely the place 
most song-birds the most love. It is a little 
stretch of lonely road, somewhat removed from 
any houses, and yet not too far removed ; for 
most song-birds like to haunt the margins and 
the fringes of human habitations. The road 
dips into a shght valley, and on one side there is 
a forest, but of trees not too closely set, so that 
the sunlight can scatter the denser shadows ; 
and on the other side there is a descent and 
tangle of shrubs and vines and lesser trees. 
Here, in the spring and early summer, the 
warblers gather in great companies, and on any 
day, and especially in the afternoon sunshine, 
it has seemed to me as I have waited and lis- 
tened, there were almost as many and as various 
notes of bird-song as there are waving leaves 



lOO 

on the poplar and oak and scrambling vines 
set about so thickly. You shall hear the ex- 
quisite tone of the song-sparrow, and the long- 
drawn deliciously liquid note of the wood- 
thrush, and the quick whistle of bluebird, and 
many another carol and chirp and twitter and 
warble lending themselves to and weaving 
themselves through the sweet and variegated 
chorus. 

The other day I drove through the place 
and stopped my horse and listened. But there 
was nothing anywhere save the desolate winter 
stillness. 

And yet, in a few weeks now, those song- 
sters flying in these days through southern 
atmospheres, shall begin to feel a strange pres- 
sure of migration in them, and shall begin 
their long flight northward ; and though to- 
day the places of their northern hauntings are 
hostile with snows and bitter with the winter 
blasts, the migratory instinct in the little and 
songful creatures will not mislead them ; they 
shall find a summer waiting for them to nest 
and sing in, though now, whither they will 
come, is under the vigorous rule of winter. 
This is the point I would have you see, my 
friend : God does not cheat the warblers. He 
matches the instinct in them with the summer 
they shall surely find. 



lOI 



Do you remember Bryant's poem of the 
''Water-fowl"? It is deep and tender with 
the truest teaching of rehgion : 

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean's side? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned. 
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend 

Soon o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 



I02 



He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 

The instinct pressing northward in the bo- 
som of the water-fowl is not deceptive. The 
God who placed it there does not cause the 
winged creature hastening toward Labrador to 
miscarry because of it. The bird trusts its in- 
stinct, and flying through the pathless skies 
comes upon its ' ' summer home and rest. ' ' 

He who, from zone to zone. 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 

Surely I shall find my human instinct matched 
as well by a reality. 

And if anything is certain it is that the in- 
stinct of prayer has been implanted in you, my 
friend. Many a time, even before a contrary 
volition could catch it, you have instinctively 
lifted the Godward cry. Caught in some crisis, 
staggering beneath some heavy burden, every- 
thing in you presses you to call on God. You 
do not stop to reason about it ; you do it be- 
fore a laggard reasoning can arrange its pre- 
mises and come to its conclusions. I think here 
is a granitic basis for you, my friend. Trust 
you your instinct. Over against it, and match- 



ing it, there is a Heavenly Father's heart and 
help. Is it not after all a thing too densely 
inconceivable — that God should steadily mis- 
lead you, a soul who has the instinct of prayer 
ramifying through your entire nature ? 

Another reason why, it seems to me, you 
should refuse to doubt the real good and force 
of prayer, is that it is quite conceivable God 
can answer prayer without the breaking of any 
natural law whatever; and so the fact and 
presence of natural law need not be a cause of 
stumbling to you concerning prayer. 

I was reading lately a deeply interesting in- 
terview with Mr. Edison. This is what he said, 
speaking with great earnestness : ' * I tell you 
that no person can be brought into close con- 
nection with the mysteries of nature, or make 
a study of chemistry, or of the law of growth, 
^vithout being convinced that behind it all there 
is a Supreme Intelligence. I do not mean to 
say a supreme law, for that implies a conscious- 
ness ; but I mean to say with emphasis a Su- 
preme Intelligence, operating through un- 
changeable laws. I am convinced of that. 
And I think that I could, perhaps I may some 
time, demonstrate the existence of such Intel- 
ligence through the operation of these myste- 
rious laws with the certainty of a demonstration 
in mathematics." 



I04 

I think that is a fine and real distinction 
another has made, that **the universe is not 
governed by natural law, but rather according 
to natural law. ' ' 

Just recall, my friend, some of the marvelous 
achievements of Mr. Edison. How, say fifty 
years since, — yes, a much less time ago than 
that, — they would have been pronounced im- 
possible because opposed to natural law. But 
Mr. Edison has wrought them, not against, but 
according to natural law — by the better knowl- 
edge of these laws and by the quickest and 
most thorough obedience to them, and so by 
the manipulation of these laws, but breaking 
never a gossamer shred of them, to special ends 
and uses. 

And I do not think you can consider it at all 
out of or against reason to say and to believe 
that certainly God, who knows all law and is the 
fountain of it all, can himself, through his in- 
finite knowledge of natural law, so use and 
lovingly manipulate natural law that along the 
very unchangeable channels of it shall flow 
benignant answer from his heart and hand to 
you. 

Therefore pray, my friend, and believe in 
prayer as a valid and achieving force. You are 
not doing athwart the analogy of things when 
you pray \ you are doing according to the an- 



I05 

alogy of things. Pray then. You are not in 
an orphaned world. God is your Father, and 
you are his child. 



XVIII 
CONCERNING SPECIAL PRAYER 

THAT is good counsel which one of the 
sweetest and quaintest of our earlier Eng- 
lish poets has given us concerning daily and 
habitual prayer : 

When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave 
To do the like ; our bodies but forerun 

The spirit's duty ; true hearts spread and heave 
Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun. 

Give him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep 

Him company all day, and in him sleep. 

Walk with thy fellow-creatures, note the hush 
And whisperings among them. Not a spring 

Or leaf but hath its morning hymn ; each bush 
And oak doth know I AM- — canst thou not sing? 

Oh, leave thy cares and follies ! Go this way, 

And thou art sure to prosper all the day. 

Yes, a day entered through the gates of 
daily and habitual prayer is aptest to be a 
prosperous day. 

But there are peculiar seasons when we are 
specially pressed to pray. It is of such times 



io6 



God's ancient singer sings in the eighty-sixth 
Psalm : ' ' In the day of my trouble I will call 
upon thee ; for thou wilt answer me. ' ' 

Think a moment when specially to pray. 
The note concerning prayer which the psalm 
strikes, is prayer in the day of trouble. Yes, 
in the day of trouble do not grow despairing, 
or nervous and anxious, or sadly listless, with- 
drawing the hand from the daily duty, or petu- 
lant and irritated toward Providence ; rather 
refuse to be or do these things by giving your- 
self to special prayer. 

In the day of trouble, of business perplexity, 
pray. Have you ever thought how the right 
to pray about such matters is implicitly involved 
in that petition our Lord incorporated into the 
model prayer, '^Give us this day our daily 
bread ' ' ? Bread there is a large word, and 
stands for that whole side of our Hfe and ac- 
tivity which has to do with our sustenance and 
comfort. It is into this side of things that our 
business roots itself, and therefore special lib- 
erty of petition concerning it is granted us. 
And when all sorts of obstacles and tangles 
emerge in the realm of our business, when the 
times squeeze as they often do, when values 
fall and payments are laggard, and almost 
every man is sore bestead, one of the best 
and most overcoming things a man can do 



I07 

about this or that perplexity in business is 
specifically to pray about it. Various and sur- 
prising help of skill, wisdom, clear vision, if 
not of sudden deliverance, is apt to stream in 
upon the man who prays. 

In the day of trouble, of a great sorrow, 
pray. A picture held me the other day. It 
was the interior of a European peasant's home, 
rude and poor. A Httle child, deathly sick, 
was lying upon a bed made of chairs and pil- 
lows. On a table, bare and small, stood the 
remedies ; and intently gazing upon the sick 
child, watching to get the first sign of response 
to the remedies just given, sat the physician. 
The young father stood beside his wife with 
the look of sad endurance on his face, and the 
mother sat with her arms flung upon the only 
other table in the room, with her face hidden 
in her arms, but praying, I am sure. What 
better thing could the mother be doing than 
praying amid such troublous sorrow? Some- 
how prayer, in such a time, anchors to God, if 
it does nothing more, and prevents the soul 
from drifting lonelily off into the salt and bitter 
sea of a complete despair. 

In the day of trouble, of great weakness, 
pray. There are times when the nerve of 
energy seems utterly to relax, when strength 
seems to have been sucked up by some con- 



io8 



fronting difficulty or duty. If you must cease 
doing everything else then, you need not cease 
special praying. You are in the precise crisis 
for special prayer. Often a conscious and con- 
fessed and dependent weakness is the best 
strength. Just to hang on God, is frequently 
to quickest achieve. When the angel of the 
Lord had laid his finger on the thigh of Jacob, 
and when, the pillar of strength for the wrestler 
being thrown out of joint, he could no longer 
wrestle, but must simply and only cling, he 
conquered. We vanquish oftener by clinging 
than by wrestling. 

Also in the day of trouble, of great anxiety 
for others, or of some tormenting and haunt- 
ing doubt, pray. Keep at special prayer in 
such special days of trouble, anyway. And re- 
member always this great fact about a day of 
trouble — it is impossible that you come upon 
one in which you may not pray. 

Think a moment concerning how to pray. 
The psalmist tells us, ' ' In the day of trouble 
I will call upon thee." Call, then; call au- 
dibly. It is a good thing, in the day of trouble, 
just to put into words and voice, before God's 
throne, the whole matter ; to disclose and de- 
clare to him all the most hidden reserves and 
windings of the troublous, carking bother ; to 
hold back nothing of it. Frequently the drag- 



I09 

ging of a thing forth out of its dimness of mere 
thought about it, and the compelling of it to 
clothe itself in distinct and identifying speech, 
is a tremendous help. And then there is also 
all the help which comes from the feehng that 
you have actually made your Heavenly Father 
a confidant. 

Call also with the speech of thought. Let 
the mind dwell inaudibly on the trouble and 
on God. Call also by holding yourself in 
steady communion with God. Keep in pray- 
erful and communing mood toward God, 
whether your prayer and thought focus them- 
selves on the particular trouble or not. 

All this is real calling, real prayer. That 
beautiful hymn of James Montgomery tells it 
admirably : 

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 

Uttered or unexpressed ; 
The motion of a hidden fire 

That trembles in the breast. 

Prayer is the burden of a sigh, 

The falling of a tear, 
The upward glancing of an eye, 

When none but God is near. 

Prayer is the simplest form of speech 

That infant lips can try ; 
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach 

The Majesty on high. 



no 

Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice 

Returning from his ways, 
While angels in their songs rejoice 

And cry, " Behold he prays ! " 

Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 

The Christian's native air ; 
His watchword at the gates of death. 

He enters heaven with prayer. 

Nor prayer is made by man alone ; 

The Holy Spirit pleads. 
And Jesus, on the eternal throne, 

For sinners intercedes. 

O thou, by whom we come to God, 
The Life, the Truth, the Way, 

The path of prayer thyself hast trod ; 
Lord, teach us how to pray. 

Think a moment, now, of the use of special 
prayer. The psahnist sings its use also : ' ' For 
thou wilt answer me." That is the use of 
special prayer, that God will, somehow, answer. 

Sometimes by calmness; you have been 
nervous and fretted and anxious ; you have 
specifically prayed about the troubling thing, 
and there has come to you a most gracious 
calm and holy strength and resigned readiness 
to suffer or to do. Often in this way God an- 
swers special prayer. Sometimes by relief, by 
a kind of prophetic certainty of deliverance, 
God answers special prayer. Sometimes by 



reply delayed God answers special prayer. 
Lazarus died, and the Lord still tarried ; but 
he came with delayed but with how much 
more glorious answer than the prayerful mes- 
sage to him of Mary and of Martha meant. 
Sometimes by denial God answers our special 
prayer, but only when denial of our request is 
better for us than assent would be. Do you 
enough remember that the answer of denial is 
still real answer? And with God denial is 
always better blessing. Sometimes by unrec- 
ognized answer God makes reply to special 
prayer. You pray, and apparently nothing 
comes of it. But as the days go, you find that 
surely something has come of it. The causes 
for your trouble have dissipated slowly, per- 
haps, but steadily and really. You have been 
fully answered, though at the time you knew 
it not. 

Use special prayer for special times. 

More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. 



For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 

For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 



112 



XIX 
CONCERNING HOPE 

HOPE is expectation. It has an eye for 
horizons ampler and nobler than those 
of the narrow present. As a great teacher 
says, ' ' Hope covers all that ground which the 
mind occupies in looking into the future for 
certain great values and results, not merely in 
forelooking, but in looking forward with special 
and concurrent joy." Hope makes even the 
struggle of the daily life, and the wear and tear 
of it, ' ' not like the convict' s trample on the 
world's great treadmill, but like an ascent on 
the luminous steps of duty to the very gates of 
heaven. " ' ' O blessed hope, ' ' exclaims Thomas 
Carlyle, ' ' whereby on man' s strait prison walls 
are painted beautiful, far-stretching landscapes ; 
and into the night of very death is shed holiest 
dawn. ' ' 

All great doers have been great hopers. I. 
have read how, in his later Hfe, General Grant 
once said to a personal friend that his habit of 
day-dreaming, a kind of large and persistent 
hoping, had never left him. In his earlier life 
he had resigned from the army, and things had 
been going pretty steadily against him. He 
was working away on a farm near St. Louis, 



113 

and his wont was to carry a load of wood to the 
city for sale, and then ride back in his empty 
cart. As he rode he threw himself out of his 
hard surroundings by hope. He had longed 
to command a regiment, and he had also 
longed to visit Europe, and have his wife share 
his sight-seeing. And it was a favorite sort of 
hoping dream of his, as he rode homeward in 
that empty wood-cart in the gathering evening, 
to think of himself as again in the army, and 
this time as full colonel ; and then to think of 
himself as, with Mrs. Grant, making the tour of 
Europe. Foohsh enough such hoping seemed 
for a poor farmer jogging homeward in the 
dusky sunset in an empty wood-cart. But the 
hope was inspiration to him. And the reality 
of it all at last burst the bounds of his most 
daring dreaming. Hoping thus, even in Gen- 
eral Grant' s then circumstances, was vastly bet- 
ter business than a weak bewailing of his hard 
and hostile phght. And it is a noteworthy fact 
that, all through the war. General Grant's ut- 
terances and dispatches had in them this note 
of hope somehow sounding. I do not think 
you can find anywhere in them so much as the 
shadow of a suggestion of despair or of ultimate 
defeat. 

One of the finest pictures with which history 
can present you is that of Milton, old and poor 



114 

and bKnd, odious to the restored royalists, his 
friends exiled from him, himself distrusted by 
those who in the brave days of Oliver Crom- 
well had most trusted him, slashed at by cut- 
ting tongues, but abating not a jot of heart and 
hope — setting himself to the making of the 
mighty poem which he was sure the world 
would not wilHngly let die. 

A picture like this, which some one sketched 
in shining words, once stirred me. Somebody 
had come from a distant province to visit 
Rome. He had stored his memory with the 
great sights that he might tell them to his 
friends at home. But one day was a red-letter 
day for him. He was walking along the Ap- 
pian Way. A mighty and various crowd, sol- 
diers, senators, favorites, ladies in lavish dress, 
were josthng each other in the thronged thor- 
oughfare, riding, walking. Amid the concourse 
his eye falls for an instant upon a company of 
soldiers guarding and escorting a wan, wearied, 
half-blind, manacled prisoner. The visitor is 
gazing at this sight listlessly. Just then there 
is a burst of music, then a wave of applause 
and shouting sweeps toward him ; and then 
the golden chariot of the emperor, drawn by 
splendid horses in glittering harness and with 
Nero himself loUing in the chariot, dashes by. 
Ah, that is a red-letter day for this visitor. 



115 

He has seen the emperor ! He thinks no 
more of the slight, manacled prisoner. When 
he goes home he hastens to tell his friends 
about the grand sight of the emperor and 
never thinks to mention his sight of the poor 
prisoner. But the really grand sight the visitor 
saw that day was not the emperor, but was the 
prisoner. For the prisoner was Paul the apos- 
tle, and he rules the ages. But the scepter of 
Nero has become but a forgotten bauble. 

And one reason why this prisoner, Paul, 
wrought so, and still rules so, is because of the 
hope in him. He knew himself, through hope, 
to be more than he seemed. He might be 
prisoner, but he was also ambassador of a 
deathless king and of a deathless kingdom. 
How he widens the horizon for the slaves, the 
poor, the persecuted of that great Rome, and 
for all men through the centuries as he says 
his benediction : " Now the God of hope fill 
you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye 
may abound in hope, through the power of the 
Holy Ghost." 

Yes, the great doers have always been great 
hopers. Tennyson sings of, ''The mighty 
hopes which make us men." 

Have you ever thought, my friend, of the 
worst loss which can come to a man ? Loss of 
property ? that is a sad loss, but not the worst. 



ii6 



Loss of friends ? that is a sad loss, but not the 
worst. Loss of opportunity? nor is that the 
worst of losses. Loss of hope, when the heart 
dies and the courage fails and the hands hang 
listlessly and a man begins only and sadly to 
drudge — this, the loss of hope, is the blackest 
loss. 

"I've just got back from Washington, where 
I've been since the election trying to get an 
appointment, * ' said a pohtician. 

*'Gave up hope, eh?" said a sympathizing 
friend. 

* ' Oh, no, ' ' was the quick reply. * ' I came 
home to hope. It's cheaper to hope here." 

I like that, my friend ; hope anyway. Get, 
if you must, the cheapest place to hope, but 
hope ! 

I think we should refuse to lose hope, even 
when hard times grip us, for one reason be- 
cause God is. I like much that snatch from 
Luther's "Table-Talk" : 

"At one time I was sorely vexed and tried 
by my own sinfulness, by the wickedness of 
the world, and by the dangers that beset the 
church. One morning I saw my wife dressed 
in mourning. Surprised, I asked her who 
had died. * Do you not know ? ' she replied ; 
* God in heaven is dead. ' ' How can you talk 
such nonsense, Katie ? ' I said ; ' how can God 



117 

die ? Why, he is immortal, and will live through 
all eternity. ' ' Is that really true ? ' she asked. 
*0f course,' I said, still not perceiving what 
she was aiming at ; * how can you doubt it ? 
As surely as there is a God in heaven, so sure 
is it that he can never die. ' ' And yet, ' she 
said, ' though you do not doubt that, yet you 
are so hopeless and discouraged.' Then I ob- 
served what a wise woman my wife was, and 
mastered my sadness. ' ' 

I think we should also resolve never to cease 
from hope because Christ is. It is winter now, 
but God's gift of the summer is ahead. And 
how much that gift includes ; soft airs, waving 
banners of leaves, choirs of birds, the green grass 
hanging its robes of verdure from all the hills, 
the bespangling of the flowers — what multitu 
dinous and various gifts the gift of the summer 
means ! And what surprising things the gift of 
Christ includes. When you are downhearted 
wait a little to meditate on his Scripture and 
see if you can after all help hoping : '* He that 
spared not his own Son, but delivered him up 
for us all, how shall he not with him also freely 
give us all things ? ' ' 

I think we should also steadily hope, because 
the promises are. 

I stood amazed and whispered, ' ' Can it be 
That he hath granted all the boon I sought ? 



How wonderful that he for me hath wrought ! 
How wonderful that he hath answered me ! ' ' 
O faithless heart ! He said that he would hear 
And answer thy poor prayer ; and he hath heard 
And proved his promise ! Wherefore didst thou fear ? 
Why marvel that thy Lord has kept his word ? 
More wonderful if he should fail to bless 
Expectant faith and prayer with good success. 

I think we should also hope because God's 
plan is one of steady and sure advancement : 
*' Wherein God shows us things in the slow 
history of their ripening. ' ' 

And we should also hope because heaven is. 
*'Let Jerusalem come into your mind," was 
the charge of the prophet Jeremiah to the ex- 
iled Jews. Let the heavenly Jerusalem come 
into your mind when your heart fails and your 
hope flags. This life but vestibules the eternal 
temple, and every shyest and largest hope shall 
be brimmed with fulfillment there. Sang the an- 
cient psalmist : ' ' But I will hope continually. ' ' 
In the blackest night make that your song. 

XX 
** ME " AND «* HIM " 

ALL things are in interdependence. Each 
thing is somehow intricate with other 
things. No one thing is for itself alone. 



119 

There on the seashore, the rocks support the 
tangled mazes of the seaweed ; and the sea- 
weed deadens the shock of the thundering 
breakers, and so the seaweed helps the sup- 
porting rock. 

Have you ever waited to notice what variety 
and beauty of hue are imparted to old fences, 
granite boulders, tree-trunks, by the humble 
Uchens ? It is surprising, if you take account 
of it, the glory of color the Hchens yield to that 
which, but for them, would wear only a dull 
and wearying grayness. But this wrapping 
with color is not the whole function of the 
Kchens. They are the miners of the rocks. 
They may seem to be but stains upon them, 
but they are at their duty. They are strongly 
acid and dissolve the rock and make slight 
patches of depression in it. Growing and de- 
caying, they leave a thin film of soil in which 
larger and nobler lichens can find sustenance. 
These are mightier in dissolving ability. After 
a time there is roothold for mosses, ' ' which 
absorb much moisture from the air and help 
to decay the rock by keeping the surface damp, 
for, where water is, there frost and gases can 
get to work." So mould is made in which 
higher vegetation, with clasping and burrowing 
roots, can find residence. And at last your 
compact granite boulder is broken and crum- 



I20 



bled into soil in which harvests, on which man 
hangs, germinate and grow and ripen. It is a 
real relation this, which the staining lichen 
holds to the harvest of perhaps a century ahead. 

Apparently, what can be more helpless or 
useless or unrelated than an angle-worm ? But 
one has well called them ''plowers before 
the plow." They render the earth fruitful. 
They are immense subsoilers. They change 
the deep earth into surface earth and so re- 
new the soil exhausted by much harvest yield- 
ing. By careful computation it has been found 
that in a certain section on the west coast of 
Africa, by the poor angle-worm, sixty-two thou- 
sand and more tons of subsoil are brought to 
the surface of each square mile each year. 

Here is the story of their doings, as another 
has told it : ''The most insignificant insects 
and reptiles are of much more consequence 
and have much more influence in the economy 
of nature than the incurious are aware of. 
Earthworms, though in appearance a small and 
despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if 
lost, would make a lamentable chasm. Worms 
seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, 
which would proceed but lamely without them, 
by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, 
and rendering it pervious to rains and the 
fibres of plants ; by drawing straws and stalks 



121 

of leaves and twigs into it ; and most of all, by- 
throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of 
earth called worm-casts, which, being their ex- 
crement, is fine manure for grain and grass. 
The earth without worms would soon become 
coldj hard bound, and void of fermentation, 
and consequently sterile. ' ' 

Mr. Darwin found once that fourscore seeds 
started into growth, which seeds he had taken 
from a small ball of mud which had glued itself 
to the leg of a bird. * ' Not a bird can fall to 
the ground and die without sending a throb 
through a wide circle." 

Queer and noteworthy — that interrelation 
which Mr. Darwin traces between cats and 
clover. Purple clover blossoms fertilized by 
pollen carried from flower to flower by the 
humble-bees ; so the more humble-bees the 
more clover. But the combs of the humble- 
bees contain a peculiar delicacy for field-mice ; 
so the more field-mice the less humble-bees 
and the less clover. But the field-mice are 
luscious morsels for the cats ; so the more cats, 
the less field-mice, the more combs of the hum- 
ble bees, and the more clover ; so the more 
cats kept upon the farm the more luxuriant 
clover-fields. 

Thus is it true that all things are in interde* 
pendence, that each thing is intricate with 



other things, that no one thing can be for it- 
self alone. 

But even more emphatically true is this in 
the higher realm of souls. Here, in mightiest 
measure, is it a fact that none of us liveth to 
himself, and that no man dieth to himself. 

I have hung many a time in thought over 
that snatch in ' ' In Memoriam, ' ' in which 
Tennyson so wonderfully sings the coming and 
the growth of the consciousness of the ' ' me ' ' : 

The baby new to earth and sky, 
What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 

Has never thought that " this is I." 

But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of " I " and " me," 
And finds **I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch." 

So rounds he to a separate mind 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As through the frame that binds him in, 

His isolation grows defined. 

This is the great fact which announces itself 
to the growing child ; the fact of the ' ' me, ' ' 
of the difference between the ' ' me ' ' and the 
' ' not me, ' ' of that real and awful loneliness 
upon which every one of us is islanded. 

Yet, at the same time with the coming and 
growth of the consciousness of the *'me," 



123 

there is necessarily the coming and growth of 
the recognition of the other than the ' ' me, ' ' 
the ''him." 

And still, though there is a chasm so deep 
between the *'me" and the ''him," the 
"me" and the "him" are in interdepend- 
ence and interrelation. The "me" cannot 
be without reference to the "him," and the 
"him" cannot be without effect upon the 
"me." None of us liveth to himself and no 
man dieth to himself. 

But there is this great difference which 
emerges between the lower realm of things and 
the higher realm of souls — in the realm of things 
the interrelation and influence of one thing on 
another must be what it is ; while in the realm 
of souls the interrelation and influence of soul 
on soul may be this or may be that, as the 
soul shall determine. 

Think of the interrelation and influence of a 
real kindliness of a kindly soul on another and 
stronger soul. One Sunday night, years since, 
a young man and his young wife strayed into 
a church service. They were a lonely couple 
in a great city. They were neither of them 
Christians — rather, both of them carelessly, 
blatantly unchristian. With the services they 
were not so specially impressed. But after the 
services, as they were standing about looking 



124 

at the church, the pastor approached them, 
and flinging his arm over the shoulder of the 
young man, welcomed him and his wife in a 
way so genuinely cordial that the hard edge of 
their strangeness was at once smoothed away 
and the young couple were sure somebody had 
real interest in them. ' ' We' 11 go to that church 
again, ' ' they said together after the warm wel- 
come. They did. 

It was not long before both husband and 
wife accepted Christ as their Saviour and their 
Lord, and united with that church. It was a 
great trophy that pastor began to win that 
night, not by his sermon, but by his welcome. 
Almost penniless, and obscure, and quite 
disheartened as that young man was on that 
night, that welcome began enthralling. To- 
day he is the member of a firm which flings the 
meshes of its business the land through ; and 
all his business is done under the eye of Christ ; 
and perhaps the best and most winning Sun- 
day-school worker and superintendent I have 
ever known is he who was that lonely young 
man ; and his wife is a steady helper with him 
in all strong and high endeavor. I did not win 
him. I knew him years after he had been won. 
But what a winning it was ! How mightily 
worth the while ! How the ' ' me ' ' in the 
pastor helped and blessed the **him" and 



125 

*'her" in them, and through them many, 
many others. 

And what that pastor did, the ' ' me ' ' in you 
can do toward the ' ' him ' ' next you. I knew a 
silent church usher once. He had no gift of 
pubHc speech or prayer. He was more habitu- 
ally silent than I think any Christian ought to 
be. But he magnified his office as church usher. 
And it is an office of tremendous possibilities 
if one will but so account it. He showed 
strangers to seats as though he loved to do it ; 
saw that they had hymn books ; made the way 
easy for them ; told them if they would come 
again he would always do his best for them. 
When he died four persons said : ' ' What won 
me to the Lord Jesus was his ushering. ' ' Ah, 
if the *'me" will, in how many ways can the 
' ' me ' ' capture for the good, and uphft and 
keep the ' ' him. ' ' 

Look at the matter from another side. Take 
an instance of example downward. It was a 
so-called reputable theatre, — by all odds the 
most reputable in the city. But even so-called 
reputable theatres will put upon their boards 
shameless plays. This theatre did. Some 
professed Christians went to see this play. 
They were shocked and loud in their denun- 
ciation of it. But they cannot help the mar- 
shahng of their influence on the side of such 



126 



things, for they were present at that play. Nor 
was it possible for them to be present at that 
play and not have the " me " in them cast a 
bad spell over the ' ' him " or " her ' ' in 
others. Necessarily, being there, they were 
seen there. And the sight of them there was 
a sanction for the presence of others there. 

There is no use denying facts like these. 
No man liveth to himself. He cannot if he 
tries to. He is immeshed in a mighty web of 
interrelated hfe. No ''me" can act without 
reference to some ''him." 

One of the sad things, in these latter days, 
to a thoughtful observer, is the unwillingness 
of the "me" to deny himself for the sake 
of the "him." But the "me" is responsible 
for the sort of influence it flings out toward the 
"him." And the "me" cannot dodge the 
responsibiHty or get rid of it. 

I am myself, but I am for and toward others. 
' ' He was indeed the glass wherein the noble 
youth did dress themselves." What better 
ambition for the " me " than to be such glass 
of purity and high honor that the ' ' him ' ' 
may be won to robing himself worthily ! But 
whether the " me " be this or not, he is a glass 
of some sort to the "him." And he cannot 
help being ; ' ' For none of us liveth to him- 
self, and no man dieth to himseii.'"' 



127 

XXI 
THE RIGHT TIME FOR THINGS 

APPII FORUM was a place forty-three miles 
from Rome, the terminus of the canal 
which threaded the Pontine marshes — a place 
described by Horace as ''full of insolent barge- 
men and exorbitant tavern-keepers." Three 
Taverns was another Httle station on the road 
toward Rome, distant from Rome some three- 
and-thirty miles. 

Along this road, pushing northward toward 
Rome from Puteoli, the southern port of the 
great city, the prisoner Paul has passed, has 
reached Appii Forum, and has gone onward to 
Three Taverns. 

Let us remember. Paul has been for nearly 
three years a prisoner, two of them at Caesarea ; 
the last of them filled with the stormy voyage, 
the shipwreck at Malta, the waiting there 
through the three winter months. Then the 
year has been filled with the subsequent voyage 
to Syracuse, in Sicily, to Rhegium, on the south- 
ernmost extremity of Italy and in the straits 
of Messina ; then to Puteoli, the southern port 
of Rome ; and then with the land journey of a 
hundred and fifty miles to Rome itself. This 
land journey has been accomphshed, save the 



12$ 



last stage of it, reaching from Appii Forum and 
the Three Taverns to the metropolis. A long- 
time prisoner, and still a prisoner, much buf- 
feted by shipwreck and various labor and pri- 
vation, is the apostle. 

And what shall be his reception in the vast 
and wonderful metropolis which he is now for 
the first time to see ? The Christians in Rome 
— will they receive him and welcome him ? Or 
have the Judaizers, who were always dogging 
Paul with enmity and hindrance, steeled the 
hearts of the Christians in Rome against him ? 
What chance shall he have in Rome for the 
preaching of the gospel ? And what shall be 
the outcome of his appeal to the cruel Nero, 
the then Caesar ? Questions enough crowding 
him, anxieties enough harassing him, doubts 
enough assaulting him. Prisoner as he is, a 
human sympathy will be very precious. 

And here at Appii Forum and at the Three 
Taverns, the sun shines for Paul and the clouds 
scatter. The Christians in Rome have heard 
of his coming, and deputations from these 
Christians have started down to meet him. 
And here at Appii Forum, and here again at 
the Three Taverns, the kindly eyes of Christian 
brethren look upon his worn face, and warm 
hearts welcome him, and the hands of a loving 
and Christly fellowship grasp his hands, man- 



129 

acled though they be, ' ' Whom, when Paul saw, 
he thanked God and took courage. ' ' 

And will you notice the timeliness of this 
Christian sympathy? Just when Paul most 
needed sympathy, it met him, and his heart 
grew strong. 

There was a beautiful anticipation in the 
sympathy of these Christians, a gracious put- 
ting of themselves in Paul's place. These 
Christians did not wait for the expression of 
their kindly sympathy till Paul had reached 
Rome ; did not wait till he, a stranger in the 
great city, should have somehow found them 
out. They anticipated his need and, with a 
sweet forecasting, met him with their love and 
help just at the very time he needed it the 
most. 

So the right time for sympathy is, when it is 
needed. And Christians, with clear and loving 
intention, are to discover when it is needed, 
and proffer it there and then. 

There is common complaint that young men 
do not enough frequent the churches, somehow 
drop away from them, get and keep separated 
from them. I am persuaded that a frequent 
reason for this is because when a young man, 
a stranger, appears in our larger churches, he 
does not enough find welcome and handgrasp 
of the sort which sought out Paul at Appii 



I30 

Forum and at the Three Taverns. A friend 
of mine, when he was a young man, went to 
live in a college city. He was lonely and some- 
times heartsick. But he was a Christian, and 
was determined to stand for his faith, and in 
the strange place to take up his Christian duty. 
He went to a church in the denomination to 
which he belonged, took a sitting, was a regular 
attendant also at the weekly prayer meeting. 
Do you know that though he had thus identi- 
fied himself with that church, and was regularly 
present, for three long years not a soul spoke 
to him, not once was the hand of a Christian 
welcome extended to him. He came and went, 
and they let him come and go. He longed for 
some recognition on the part of members of 
that church, he gave them opportunity to yield 
it to him, but they somehow would not or did 
not. He must have been a remarkable young 
fellow, that friend of mine, not to have dropped 
off. 

But he did not. He was a Christian — a 
good, grand, strong one. Meantime he had 
made other acquaintances in the city and had 
ceased to feel his loneHness, could get on now 
very well without the welcome and sympathy 
of the attendants at that church. At last, when 
three years were gone, and when the young 
man did not pecuharly need welcome and ac- 



131 

quaintanceship, a prominent member of the 
church proffered recognition and acquaintance. 
I think that young man had a tough time. I 
think many young men, looking into the doors 
of our larger churches, have as tough a time. 
I am persuaded that right here is a real and 
great reason why many young men, not set in 
famiUes, living in boarding-houses, Hke the 
Sunday newspaper better than the church serv- 
ice. There are multitudes of churches that 
are so careless of the strangers, especially of the 
young men who come to them ! What we want 
in every church and Sunday-school is more 
Appii-Forum and Three-Tavern Christians ! 
Oh, it is a most gracious thing to go through 
hfe not stinting sympathy, but wealthily yield- 
ing it, and in the time for it ! 

XXII 
HAVING THINGS ON YOUR SIDE 







NE of the quaintest of our earlier English 
poets sings : 

We are but farmers of ourselves, yet may 
If we can stock ourselves and thrive, uplay 
Much good treasure for the great rent day. 

Wise words these of a great thinker : * ' How 
true that there is nothing dead in this universe ; 



132 

that what we call dead is only changed — its 
forces working in inverse order. * The leaf that 
lies rotting in moist winds,' says one, ' has still 
force, else how could it rot ? ' Our whole uni- 
verse is but an infinite complex of forces — 
thousand-fold from gravitation up to thought 
and will ; . . in all which nothing at any mo- 
ment slumbers, but all is forever awake and 
busy. ' ' 

It is a great thing to have mighty forces work- 
ing for you instead of against you, so enabhng 
you to ' ' uplay much good treasure for the great 
rent day. ' ' The other summer I made a swift 
and easy voyage from Liverpool to New York 
because great and wonderful forces were work- 
ing for us ; the strength of the immense steel 
shaft which sustains the screw was mightier than 
the impact of the waves ; the winds helped in- 
stead of hindered ; the water, kept out by the 
stanch iron hull, made buoyant pathway for 
the huge steamer. But it was far different with 
the steamer ^' Spree." Her broken shaft, the 
inrushing waters into her leaking hold, the 
tumbUng waves capturing her between their 
hollows, the winds and currents driving her 
helplessly from her course, all these vast forces 
were not her servants but her masters, working 
not for her but all the time against her. Mr. 
Emerson puts the matter well : * * The water 



^33 

drowns ship and sailor like a grain of dust ; but 
trim your bark and the wave which drowned it 
will be cloven by it and carry it like its own 
foam, a plume and a power." 

I never cease to wonder at the electric cars 
speeding through the city. A brush of copper 
wires rapidly revolving against a cylinder, and 
from somewhere the mysterious force is gath- 
ered which takes the car and passengers in its 
unknown arms and carries them easily over the 
hills as well as along the levels. It is all well 
as long as the electricity is working for you, but 
when the trolley wire breaks and the lurid, 
green -flashing sparks sputter danger at you it 
is another matter. 

Right here is a great diff*erence between 
savagery and civilization — that in the one case 
man is slave of the great, natural forces and 
working against him they control him, but in 
the other case, through knowledge of these 
forces, man harnesses and controls fhem. 

And there are certain vast moral and spirit- 
ual forces at work within every one of us which 
make for life if they be working for us, which 
make for death if they work against us. What, 
after all, is the disposition of a man but the 
sum total of a man's habitual tendencies in this 
direction or in that ? You say of this one or 
that one, "It's just like him ' ' ; and you mean, 



134 

and you mean rightly, that having general no- 
tion of his habitual tendencies you are sure he 
will do thus and so. Mr. Dickens' Scrooge 
might be counted on for being close and mean 
because he had allowed and caused the forces 
of his nature to set in such direction. Tiny 
Tim, awaking the better nature dormant in 
him, gave this nobler nature chance to work 
against the lower and at last to compel it into 
defeat, but only through a great conflict and 
moral upheaval in Mr. Scrooge. ' ' Habit a 
second nature ! Habit is ten times nature," 
exclaimed the Duke of Wellington. How ac- 
curately Shakespeare puts it when he says, 
^' Use doth breed a habit in a man." 

Now there can come no vaster blessing to a 
man than that he have this magisterial and in- 
ward force of habit working for him rather than 
against him, working steadily toward all right- 
eousness and nobleness rather than from them. 
Such a man is as a boat clasped by a strong cur- 
rent and therefore carried toward sunny harbor. 
A metaphysical friend of mine has, I think, ad- 
mirably reduced the laws controlling habit to 
two main ones. This is the first law : * * Habit 
diminishes feeUng and increases activity." 
How true that is ! He will vanquish some 
musical instrument he says. He begins. How 
tough the beginning. How he must feel his 



135 

way, seeing that this finger strikes that key and 
not another ! How slowly the fingers move, 
as if they were somehow chained from doing 
the thing which he would have them. But by 
and by a kind of automatism has usurped the 
place of the feeling laggard and difficult, and 
with a sort of glorious unconsciousness the 
fingers find the keys, and with a swiftness me- 
lodiously surprising. And moral and spiritual 
habits are under the sway of this law too. All 
habit is, of every sort. 

This is the second great law controlling habit : 
' ' Habit tends to become permanent and to 
exclude the formation of other habits. ' ' This 
law is evident upon its face. Now suppose a 
man gets this force of habit working for him on 
the side of nobleness and righteousness, what 
an acquisition for a man ! Into what splendid 
and benignant thraldom a man comes ! He shall 
reach a state at last where, while it will never be 
an iron necessity that he do not sin, for his 
moral freedom will remain, it will have become 
certain that he will not, he shall have become so 
settled in the grooves of righteousness. This, 
I think, is at least a hint of the meaning of the 
Scripture about the crown of fife ; the man has 
entered into the fixed kinghood over himself 
toward righteousness. Nothing can be more 
important for a young person than that he see 



136 

to it that this compelling inward force of habit 
is on his side. This is the real and beneficent 
philosophy of the Christian Endeavor pledge ; 
it gives direction toward the empire over one 
of the best habits. 



XXIII 
A GREAT FACT 

WHAT a great fact that is, told us in the 
seventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews and at the twenty-fifth verse, con- 
cerning our Lord, "seeing he ever live th " ! 

Said Napoleon at St. Helena to his physi- 
cian, Dr. O'Meara, about the battle of Water- 
loo : * ' The British were defeated at midday. 
I had beaten the Prussians. Before twelve 
o'clock I had succeeded. Everything was 
mine, I may say. But accident and destiny 
decreed otherwise. ' ' And nevermore was Na- 
poleon to lead conquering hosts to victory. 

For every one of us in this world there is to 
be a last and Waterloo defeat. By original 
strength of constitution and various care we 
may, perhaps, somewhat put oif the day of it ; 
but the day will surely strike when against 
each one of us death will make triumphant 
onset. 



137 

The point is, this death, which has already 
whelmed so many and which is sure some day 
to whelm each one of us, whelmed our Lord 
also as drenchingly and entirely. His heart 
broke. The spear of the Roman soldier cleft 
his heart in twain. The precious contents of 
it reddened the rough cross. No son of Adam 
more utterly dead than he ! 

But the supreme fact is that what is Waterloo 
defeat to all of us was not to our Lord. Forth 
from death he came in glorious resurrection, 
in the strongest sense alive. 

Think. Have you thought enough of it, my 
friend? Make catalogue of what preceded 
that death and the incidents of the death itself : 
The unspeakably tender yet straining farewell 
to the disciples in that upper room ; the awful 
and exhausting agony in Gethsemane ; the 
rude arrest and the hurried walk from Geth- 
semane to Jerusalem ; the three separate 
stages of the trial ecclesiastical — before Annas, 
before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin during the 
night, before the Sanhedrin again at daybreak ; 
the trial civil and in that three separate stages 
— before Pilate, before Herod, before Pilate 
again ; the total sleeplessness for our Lord 
through that long, eventful night ; the scourg- 
ing, derisions, blindfolding, and rough smitings 
of the pitiless Roman soldiery ; the journey to 



138 

Golgotha, himself bearing his cross ; his faint- 
ing beneath its weight from his weariness and 
nervous strain ; the six hours' torture of the 
cross ; at last the literal heart-break on the 
cross ; the death ; the cleaving of his heart by 
the Roman spear. 

But have you noticed enough that our Lord 
came forth in glorious resurrection from such 
death and from such wasting concomitants of 
it as though death had been to him a kind of 
refreshing and healing bath ? 

He did not rise out of death a smitten and 
wounded invalid. He did not rise with bleed- 
ing and gaping wounds. What marks of 
wounds he chose to carry were but marks of 
wounds which had found their healing. Our 
Lord rose in glorious resurrection out of such 
lacerating and subduing death in vigorous 
health. He was utterly alive, in all of life's 
strongest meanings. The death he went down 
into, from that death he came up out of, with 
death completely vanquished. 

Will you notice also, my friend, that out of 
such death he rose into fuller and larger life 
than he had had before death smote him ? He 
reached up into a new realm and sort of life. 
No longer was he stricken by the sun-heats, as 
before at Jacob's well ; no longer so captured 
by sleep that the roarings of the tempest could 



139 

not waken him, as before on the sea of Gali- 
lee ; no longer needing food or water, as be- 
fore in the house of Simon or at the hand of 
the woman of Samaria. A hfe of largeness and 
Hberty is his life now, a Hfe of swift appearings 
and disappearings ; shut doors do not hinder 
him, distances do not compel paths of weary 
travel for him. And yet he is not ghost or 
disembodied spirit. ''Behold my hands and 
my feet, that it is I myself : handle me and 
see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as 
ye see me have." 

And when, as to bodily appearance, our 
Lord leaves this world of ours, he does not 
leave it by the way of death again. He leaves 
it by ascension. They are gathered with him 
there on the top of Olivet. He is talking with 
them. He has slipped the leash of gravity. He 
begins to rise. Steadily, majestically, he rises 
still. They strain their eyes to see him, those 
disciples, as he recedes into the utmost blue. 
A bright cloud wraps him from their vision. 
Thus resurrection blossomed into ascension. 

What can you say of him but what the apos- 
tle so wonderfully and truly says, ' ' Knowing 
that Christ being raised from the dead dieth 
no more ; death hath no more dominion over 
him ' ' ? What affirmation possible, concern- 
ing this demolishing victor over death, but the 



140 

affirmation of the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, ' ' Seeing he ever liveth ' ' ? Ah, 
what a transcendent fact this is ! Our Lord is 
a Hving Lord, and with Death, to the last 
shred of his black empire, shattered beneath 
his triumphant feet. 

Now, from this great fact that he ever liv- 
eth, what consolation comes rolling in upon 
the soul held still in this realm of the dying, of 
the questioning, of the troubled ! 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
bases the reality and the persistence of our 
Lord's intercession for us on this great fact : 
' ' Seeing he ever liveth to made intercession 
for them. ' ' Think of the consolation of the 
intercession of the ever-living One as regards 
our prayers ! 

I confess it, my friend, I am afraid some- 
times of my own prayers. I know so little ; 
my horizon is so narrow . I can so slightly es- 
timate my own true needs. 

But what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry. 

Yet cry I must. The experiences of hfe press 
cries out of me. Albeit my cries are no more 
intelligent than an infant* s wailings, still I must 



141 

wail forth my desire, my hope, my passionate 
entreaty. Yet how often, hke an infant, do I 
cry for the worst things ! How slightly can I 
discover what is the real best for me ! But 
this is the consolation, though I pray so mea- 
grely and so ignorantly even in my best moods, 
I need not fear, for I pray into the heart of 
the interceding Christ. 

There is a passage in the writings of the late 
Dr. Henry B. Smith, of the Union Theologi- 
cal Seminary. I think, if I ever get to heaven, 
one of the first things I shall do will be to 
search him out and thank him for it. Let me 
quote it for you. Perhaps it will help you as 
many a time it has been like summer, with all 
its soft airs and flowers and songs of birds, to 
me. "There arises from all parts of the 
world, at the morning and evening, and 
through the labors of the day, a perpetual in- 
cense of adoration and of petition ; it contains 
the sum of the deepest wants of the human 
race, in its fears and hopes, its anguish and 
thankfulness ; it is laden with sighs, with tears, 
with penitence, with faith, with submission ; 
the broken heart, the bruised spirit, the stifled 
murmur, the ardent hope, the haunting fear, 
the mother's darling wish, the child's simple 
prayer ; all the burdens of the soul, all wants 
and desires nowhere else uttered, meet to- 



142 

gather in that sound of many voices which 
ascends into the ears of the Lord God of hosts. 
And mingled with all these cravings and utter- 
ances is one other voice, one other prayer, 
their symphony, their melody, their accord, 
deeper than all these, tenderer than all these, 
mightier than all these — the tones of One who 
knows us better than we know ourselves, and 
who loves us better than we love ourselves, 
and who brings all these myriad, fragile peti- 
tions into one prevalent intercession, purified 
by his own holiness and the hallowing power 
of his work. * ' 

I need not fear. I may pray on, even in 
my childish way, * ' in everything. ' ' Even my 
meagre, ignorant, narrow- visioned prayer shall 
find safe, wise, loving, purifying lodgment in 
the intercession of him who ever liveth. 



XXIV 
A REVELATION TO THE SORROWFUL 

WEALTHY with various revelation is the 
resurrection of our Lord. As the sun 
floods light every whither, so does the risen 
Christ stream affluent radiance, answer, cer- 
tainty. See how his effulgence brightens sor- 
row. There is Marv of the swimming eyes 



143 

and the breaking heart, lingering about the 
emptied tomb. Let her stand as specimen of 
the sorrowful ; and mark how the risen Christ 
brings her the oil of joy for mourning, the 
garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 

There is revelation for the sorrowful — that 
angels are at the behest of the risen Lord. 
There Mary sees them, those bright presences, 
keeping watch and ward where had lain the 
body of Jesus. What of angels ? Things like 
these are told us of them : They are creations 
of God ; they are agents, voluntary and intelli- 
gent ; they are possessed of power and knowl- 
edge superhuman ; they are a great multitude ; 
they stand in the presence of God and worship 
him ; they execute the divine bidding ; they 
are charged with special ministry — are they not 
all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for 
them who shall be heirs of salvation ? And 
the revelation is that these radiant, helping 
spirits are under the mandate of the risen 
Christ. 

There is real comfort here. Of the precise 
duty and mode of existence of these angels it 
is impossible that I get much conception, be- 
cause their realm of being is so different from 
my own ; my meagre present experience can- 
not much interpret their function and entity. 
But it is surely a gracious certainty, especially 



144 

when sorrow darkens, that whatever energy of 
swift, strong service angels are charged with, it 
is all in instant obedience to the Christ who 
died for me, and who for my sake has risen 
from the dead. It is good to think that their 
assistance, whatever may be the kind and 
quality of it, is in the grasp, and for my sake, 
of that triumphant hand. 

Also to Mary weeping here at the sepulchre 
there is revelation, and through her to the 
sorrowful to-day, that often that for which the 
sorrowful grieve most is benignantly the best. 

My friend, there are two sides to things. 
There is the side of the weeping Mary ; the 
dead Christ, the bruised and buried body, the 
poor solace, so passionately longed for, of car- 
ing for the dead body to love's exacting limit, 
the awful disappointment of the unsealed tomb 
and the vanished corpse. At her then phase 
of experience she could not understand it. It 
was all horribly dark and inexplicable. Even 
though she had heard the Master speak great, 
prophetic words about his resurrection, she 
could not rightly interpret them. On her side, 
and as far as she had then gotten, it was irre- 
mediably desolate. 

But there ' is another side to things, the 
Lord's. On his side, how shining it all was 
and graciously bountiful and beautiful ! That 



145 

emptied tomb and vanished body meant, 
though at first Mary could not see it, the 
Master's utter subdual of death and all the 
defeated gloom the stupendous resurrection 
means. 

My friend, you do not, cannot just now, see 
it all — that dark sorrow. There is the Lord's 
side of it. Some day you shall get on and up 
to behold his side. And then 

The things we mourned for most, 
With lashes wet, 

shall sparkle with the glory of the morning and 
stand arrayed in the beauty of an infinite and 
loving tenderness. 

** She supposing him to be the gardener." 
There is revelation here for the sorrowful. It 
is this, that Jesus is often very near us in our 
sorrow when we are ignorant of his nearness. 
Sometimes our eyes are holden, as Mary's 
were. I remember a period in my own life. 
It seemed to me things were as jagged as they 
well could be. I had lost all consciousness of 
Christ with me amid the craggy circumstances. 
I was utterly heartsick. I imagined Jesus had 
deserted me. But how plainly I see now that 
he was in all and through all, was arranging 
just the discipline I then needed. Veritably 
I could better spare many things from my 



146 

life than that sad yet educating season. Fre- 
quently he whom you think only the gardener 
is the Lord himself close to you, loving you 
fathomlessly, fitting you the more for his serv- 
ice here, his heaven yonder. 

How surely also, in this experience of Mary, 
is there revelation for the sorrowful that Jesus 
has particular and personal knowledge of us in 
our sorrow. 



XXV 

THE REVELATION TO DISCOURAGE- 
MENT 

*' \ ND that night they caught nothing," we 
iJL are told of those seven disciples. 
I think it likeliest that these seven disciples 
— Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Na- 
thanael of Cana, in Galilee, the sons of Zebe- 
dee, and two others, were waiting for that 
promised revelation of the risen Lord at the 
mountain in Galilee. In obedience to the 
risen Lord's command these disciples had gone 
northward from Jerusalem, and tarrying for 
fuller instructions concerning the appointed 
mountain and the gathering to be held there, 
meanwhile found themselves on the shore of 
the familiar lake. 



147 

It is always better when you must wait, to 
wait doing something. If you must wait to do 
the thing you want to, meantime use your 
waiting in doing the next best thing, the thing 
you can. 

When Napoleon had become chief ruler of 
France, and was carrying through that wonder- 
ful codification of the laws of France known as 
the Code Napoleon, some one asked him in 
surprise how he, a soldier, came to know so 
much of law. In reply he told how, in the 
hurly-burly of the revolution, he was impris- 
oned for a time, and had found in his prison a 
mutilated copy of the Pandects of Justinian, 
and had given the days of his imprisonment to 
a thorough mastery of it. Surely that was a 
better way of employing the time waiting for 
his release than in a Hstless and merely be- 
waihng, hoping to get out. 

I think Peter is to be much commended for 
that swift resolve, '' I go a fishing, " so using 
the time of waiting for the chief thing in doing 
something ; and also that these disciples are 
to be much commended for their ready follow- 
ing his strenuous example. 

And, by the way, heed how powerful a thing 
example is. Peter says, ' ' I go. " The rest im- 
mediately say, ' ' We go. " " He was the glass 
wherein the noble youth did dress themselves, ' ' 



148 

says Shakespeare of one of his heroes. It is 
a great and gracious thing to be of such strong, 
true character yourself, that your example shall 
incite others upward, rather than suggest 
downward. 

Many a night before, these disciples, setting 
forth on this lake of Galilee, had taken much. 
Fishing was for most of them their trade. 
They knew precisely how to cast their nets, and 
where, and the little lake was swarming too 
with fish. 

But that night, — it was a night exceptional 
and different from many another preceding 
night of successful toil, — that night, though 
they diligently used their handicraft, though 
they searched all the places where they knew 
the fish were wont to gather, though they kept 
at it through all the weary, tantalizing hours 
until the breaking of the day, hoping against 
hope at every casting of the net and hard haul- 
ing of it — that night they caught nothing. 

I think that very close to human life. 
There are, in life, periods of successful en- 
deavor, longer or shorter. Then there come 
times of great failure and of sad discourage- 
ment. And these seasons come even when 
you apply the appropriate means, as these dis- 
ciples did, sedulously casting and hauhng the 
nets the long night through. 



149 

There are such seasons of discouragement in 
spiritual experience. How full the Psalms are 
of the plaint of such periods. ''Lord, how 
are they increased that trouble me ! Many 
are they that rise up against me. Many there 
be which say of my soul, There is no help for 
him in God. " ' ' How long wilt thou forget 
me, O Lord ? for ever ? How long wilt thou 
hide thy face from me? How long shall I take 
counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart 
daily ? ' ' And even though you ply the means 
as the disciples did ; even though you read the 
Bible, pray, set yourself at the daily duty, at- 
tend upon the means of grace, you do not seem 
to get up and on, you catch nothing of the 
joy, peace, strength, vision of God, for which 
your soul is longing. You cannot honestly say 
it was always thus. Hitherto you have con- 
sciously achieved. You have grown in grace 
and in the knowledge of the Lord. But just 
now it seems otherwise to you. You seem to 
have lost ground. Failure baffles you. You 
are discouraged. 

There are such times of discouragement in 
the training of children. You have seen your 
child developing in the direction of your wish 
and prayer. Your hope has brightened, your 
cup of thankfulness has been full. Then you 
somehow seem to have lost power over your 



ISO 

child. You mark tendencies emerging which 
distress you. You see habits forming which 
you are sure must be disastrous. And you 
find yourself in a measure helpless. Your 
child does not respond to your anxious and 
persistent attempt. You seem to yourself to 
catch nothing in the way of getting noble char- 
acter substantiated in your child. Such dis- 
couragement is of the saddest sort. 

There are such times of discouragement in 
Sunday-school teaching. How you have drawn 
your class to you, ehcited interest, seen result. 
But now it is all dull and hard. The nets of 
your attempt come up empty. You seem to 
have lost power. You have almost determined 
to tell the superintendent he must release you 
and get another teacher for your class. 

There are such times of discouragement 
amid the experiences of sorrow. ' ' I am am- 
bitionless, powerless, crushed, unwiUing, and 
apparently unable to take up the work of life 
again. I am well-nigh hopeless of any more 
happiness on earth. ' ' Such was the wail which 
came to me once from one whom a sore sorrow 
had smitten. 

That night, that exceptional, different night 
— how close it is to our human lives ! If any- 
body should hail you amid your endeavor, as 
in the gray of the morning the seeming stranger 



hailed these disciples from the shore, ** Chil- 
dren, have ye aught to eat?" perhaps you 
would not think it wise to tell just how you 
felt, but if you answered according to your real 
heart you would only despairingly answer : 
" No ; my most arduous attempt has come to 
nothing, ' ' 

But here by the lake side, and to these worn 
and disheartened disciples, the risen Lord has 
revelation to such discouragement. It is a 
revelation of his knowledge of us, even though 
we do not think he knows. ' ' But when the 
morning was now come, Jesus stood on the 
shore ; but the disciples knew not that it was 
Jesus." The first thing the light discloses is 
the risen Lord on the shore there. The dis- 
ciples do not know him, but he is there, know- 
ing all about their toilful, baffling night. 

Thou knowest, not alone as God all knowing, 
As man, our mortal weakness thou hast proved ; 

On earth with purest sympathies o'erflowing, 
O Saviour, thou hast wept, and thou hast loved ! 

And love and sorrow still to thee may come, 

And find a hiding-place, a rest, a home. 

Also this revelation of the risen Lord to dis- 
couragement is the revelation of the necessity 
of obedience notwithstanding discouragement. 
' ' Cast your net on the right side of the ship, 
and ye shall find. They cast therefore." 



152 

Just what was commanded these disciples they 
did. I think it just here we so often fail. It 
is the pecuKar temptation of discouragement 
to fail, just here, at the point of an exact obedi- 
ence. We say, how often, ' ' There is no use 
trying any more," and we give over trying, 
instead of obeying. But though, Uke these 
disciples, we are wet and cold and tired and 
clean gone in hope, the thing to do is to obey, 
as they did. More than ever amid discour- 
agement, we should be scrupulous in obedience. 

Also, this revelation of the risen Lord to dis- 
couragement, is the revelation of success upon 
obedience, notwithstanding discouragement. 
' ' They cast therefore, and now they were not 
able to draw it for the multitude of fishes." 
Though the night was failure, the morning 
brought success. Such a morning is going to 
break for you. Think a moment. He is the 
risen Lord there upon the shore. He is shin- 
ing with utmost triumph. He has defeated 
sin and death. All power is in his hand. And 
you, discouraged as you are, are yet trying to 
obey him. Do you think your night will never 
break into a glad day ? It cannot but do it, 
since you have such a Lord. 

Also, this revelation of the risen Lord to dis- 
couragement, is the revelation of the risen 
Lord's most thoughtful care for our necessities. 



153 

I do not know anything in all the range of Scrip- 
ture more exquisite. Those disciples were wet, 
chilled, tired, hungry. But there, where the 
Lord stands, a fire burns, and fish is cooking 
and bread is provided. You shall find your 
fire and fish and bread, your supply for your 
needs. Your Lord is such a Lord of tender 
thoughtfulness. 

Do you know, my friend, the best thing to 
do amid discouragement ? It is this ; get 
vision of your Lord. Instead of bewailing and 
brooding and moping, read such record of your 
Lord as we have here been thinking of. And 
remember he is the same Lord. Whatever else 
changes he remains. And thus hope and pur- 
pose cannot help coming to you. I am only 
suggesting to you what I have tried myself. 

XXVI 
THE CHAMPION OF THE CHRISTIAN 

THIS is the question : Is the Christian con- 
fessing Christ, and standing for him, and 
seeking to put the feet of his life in Christ's 
footprints, — is the Christian who is bound to 
be unworldly, even though he be in a worldly 
world, who is bound to test things by other 
standards, to be impelled by other motives, to 



154 

submit to sacrifice when others rush into indul- 
gence, — is the Christian, standing thus, to be 
left alone ? Is there no champion for him ? 

I stood once in a most sad place. It was on 
one of the crests overlooking the fertile and 
beautiful valley of the Little Big Horn River. 
It was there where the gallant General Custer 
and his few brave and devoted followers met 
their death at the hands of that horde of In- 
dians under Sitting Bull. I stood there not so 
long after the fatal battle but that the terrible 
debris of it — the scarcely buried bodies, the 
slain horses, the torn uniforms, the shattered 
arms, the barricades of dead horses behind 
which the men in vain sought safety, were all 
about me. 

It was thus explained to me by one most 
competent. The horde of Indians, thousands 
strong, were encamped down in the valley of 
the river. General Custer divided his forces, 
giving the greater part of them to the com- 
mand of another officer, instructing him to go 
down into some timber in the valley, and there 
engage the Indians, while he, with the remain- 
ing portion of the command, would march far- 
ther along the heights, descend into the valley 
from a point behind the Indians, and so strike 
them in the rear, while the rest of the com- 
mand were engaging them in front. 



155 

This officer did as he was ordered, but did 
not stay there in the timber. When the In- 
dians came at him he retreated, recrossed the 
river, cUmbed the hills, and on a hill en- 
trenched himself and waited. On his retreat 
the whole throng of Indians turned back and 
set on General Custer and his few men. Nor 
did this officer come to his assistance. I de- 
tail the story as one most competent told it to 
me upon the ground. 

I remember, as I rode over that awful battle- 
field, from the hill where this officer en- 
trenched himself to the hill where General 
Custer met his death, I kept saying to myself : 
" Oh, if he had not let General Custer fight 
alone ! oh, if he had but come to his assist- 
ance ! " 

This is the question : Must the Christian 
fight alone ? Is there to be for him no assist- 
ing champion ? Yes, there is a champion for 
the Christian. Consider his name. ^^But 
when the Comforter is come whom I will send, ' * 
says our Lord. That is the name of the one 
who is ever to be the Christian's champion, 
the Comforter. 

But get the true notion of comfort. Too 
often, with us, comfort means cushion, a rest- 
ful, easy-going, dreamy somnolence — means 
the Lotos Land of which Tennyson sings : 



156 



There is music here that softer falls 

Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 

Or night dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; 

Music that gentler on the spirit lies 

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes ; 

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the bliss- 
ful skies. 

Here are cool mosses deep, 

And through the moss the ivies creep. 

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep, 

But that is not the true idea of comfort, the 
idle dreaming in such a Lotus Land. Comfort 
is {lomforfis, which means strong, and from 
con, which means with one. And the true 
meaning of the Comforter is not one who shall 
lull you, but one who shall gird you, who shall 
be strong with you that you may be strong. 
This champion of the Christian, the Comforter, 
is he who is called to the Christian's side that 
he may endue the Christian, unworldly in this 
worldly world, with all needed power. 

Consider whence comes this champion of the 
Christian. ' ' But when the Comforter is come 
whom I will send unto you from the Father 
. . . which proceedeth from the Father," 
says our Lord. The Comforter thus sent by 
Christ, and thus proceeding from the Father, 
comes. There is no need of any difficult theo- 



157 

logical disquisition about the doctrine of the 
procession of the Spirit. But notice that there 
is here involved the great and precious fact of 
the Trinity, and that the whole triune God- 
head is here represented as engaged in the as- 
sistance of the Christian. The ascended Christ 
sends, from the side of the Father he proceeds, 
and thus sent and proceeding, the Comforter, 
the Holy Spirit, comes. 

There are lonely hours. There are hours 
when life seems hardly worth the living. 
There are times when burdens seem to press 
with even unbearable heaviness, when the 
wearied and numbed hands seem scarcely able 
to keep their grasp upon life's tasks ; when all 
the heaven's blue has turned to gray, and the 
wounded foot can find no place to put itself 
along life's road that it shall not be the more 
sorely wounded by an added thorn ; when 
prayer seems to be but * ' wasted breath beaten 
back by the gale ' ' ; when memories of brighter 
seasons haunt with their contrasts, and the 
future is filled with fears which will not down, 
and the present is desolate and bereft. 

Dear heart, this is a message to you. How- 
ever you may seem to yourself bereft, you are 
not bereft. In your hard struggle you are not 
left to fight alone. There is a legend of a bat- 
tle in the old time, where, above those who 



158 

Stood for the truth and right, squadrons of an- 
gels came to do aerial and assisting combat ; 
and a great picture has embalmed the legend. 
But here is not legend. Here is fact. As 
your champion there comes, better than angels, 
the puissant Holy Spirit. 

Steadily but viewlessly is electricity at work 
in this world of ours. Wherever the electrician 
sets up his battery he can lay hold of the omni- 
present force for his own special uses. Tell 
me, sometime when you have seemed most be- 
stead, forlorn, uselessly praying, have you not 
noted in your mood a strange, fresh change ? 
Have you not felt courage coming back, 
hope kindling, strength returning, and seen 
through the gray of the heavens the cheer- 
ful blue forth-breaking ? You could not ex- 
plain your change of mood. You could not 
put your finger on this or that reason for it. 
But I can give you explanation. You had set 
up the battery of what you thought your use- 
less prayer and the Holy Spirit, who is the 
omnipresent Christ, had come to you, your 
champion, your internal and most gracious 
helper. 

Beheve, then, in the champion. Credo 
Spiritum Sanctum — I believe in the Holy Spirit ; 
let that be a most vital article in your creed. 
Expect his aid. You are not alone. You have 



159 

an infinite ally. The battle shall not go against 
you. Yonder shines the sure, eternal triumph. 



XXVII 
THE INNER HELPER 

WALKING in the woods, once on a time, 
I saw lying at my feet a nut, ripened, 
and fallen from a tree near-by. 

I picked up the nut and discovered that it 
was uninjured by worm or bite of squirrel. It 
is too bad, I said within myself, that this nut 
should not have a chance. So I made a hole 
for it with my walking-stick, and rolled it into 
the hole, and covered it with earth, and so 
gave the nut opportunity to push itself down- 
ward into roots and upward into a beginning 
tree. 

Then I fell to thinking. That nut, I thought 
within myself, is the finished product of all the 
processes of the summer. But, though it be 
thus a finished product, God has not yet fin- 
ished with the nut. In that nut there are 
latent possibilities. There is the germ within 
it ; there are cotyledons within it ; there are 
appetencies forth-reaching in it. That nut 
holds within itself a mighty tree. 

Then I bethought me of the various and 



i6o 



strong helps God had furnished for that nut, 
and which were and would be lying about it 
that it might become a tree. The soil — that 
was help for it with its various sustenance. 
The air- — that was help for it with its intermin- 
glings of carbonic acid gas. The wet — that 
was help for it with its moisture. The winds 
— they would be help for it, drifting to it 
multiplied nutriment, and by their buffetings 
compacting the growing tree. The winter 
snows — they would be help for it, folding the 
nut in as with a blanket, and so protecting it 
against the piercings of the frost. The spring 
sun — that would be help for it, as its rays 
searched it out and stirred it into growth. 
And the dark too — that would be help for it, 
with its rest, with its sleep, and with its dews. 

Then I meditated further, and said to my- 
self, let the nut teach me of higher matters. 

When God makes a Christian by justification 
and adoption through Jesus Christ, when God 
has put the penitent and believing soul back 
into sonhood, then God has not finished with 
that Christian. We are apt to think God has. 
We are apt to hmit the divine interventions to 
the threshold and beginnings of the Christian 
life. We are too apt to imagine that the 
Christian soul, commencing to be Christian, 
must struggle on wearily of itself, through the 



i6i 



processes and up into the maturings of the 
Christian life ; that God, who has so much to 
do with the making of a Christian, has com- 
paratively Httle to do with his development. 
And, right then, the nut, with all the helps 
furnished it to become a tree, began to teach 
me better. I began to find that that small nut 
was getting to be a kind of door of entrance 
for me into a great Scripture like this : ** And 
because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, 
Father. Wherefore thou art no more a serv- 
ant, but a son ; and if a son, then an heir 
of God through Christ." 

''And because ye are sons" — mark that. 
Just because, through repentance and faith in 
Jesus Christ, you have become, in the truest 
and deepest of senses, a son of God, God has 
not finished with you any more than he has 
finished with that nut which, getting to be a 
nut, all the helps of the winters and the springs 
and the summers and the autumns of all the 
years shall gather around it that it may become 
a tree. Because ye are sons, God comes with 
all the maturing assistances of the Spirit of his 
Son, the inner helper. Notice where this inner 
helper helps. ''God hath sent forth the Spirit 
of his Son into your hearts." That is the 
region where this inner helper helps. 



l62 



Such is evermore the method of Christianity. 
It is an inner method. Get the heart right, 
the thinking, loving, wiUing of the man, and 
you have gotten the man himself right. We 
hear a great deal about environment as a help- 
ing force in these days of ours. And it is such 
force, only it is largely a force external, not 
much touching the deep springs of being. But 
the help of this inner helper goes to the bot- 
tom of the need. He is sent forth into our 
hearts. 

What does this inner helper do in our 
hearts? Multitudes of helpful ministries, like 
these : He convicts of sin, regenerates, sancti- 
fies, renews, anoints, comforts, teaches, leads, 
witnesses with our spirits, seals, — puts the 
stamp of God upon us as the seal puts its con- 
figuration on the wax, — illuminates, intercedes, 
indwells, strives, imparts power, gives the feel- 
ing of sonship whereby we cry Abba, Father. 
Faber sings truly, 

God is never so far off 

As even to be near. 
He is within, our spirit is 

The home he holds most deat 

To think of him as by our side. 

Is almost as untrue 
As to remove his throne beyond 

Those skies of starry blue. 



i63 

So all the while I thought myself 
Homeless, forlorn, and weary, 

Missing my joy, I walked the earth 
Myself God's sanctuary. 

Why are we not more helped and better 
Christians ? Because we will not let this inner 
helper have all his beneficent and gracious 
way within ourselves. 



XXVIII 
THE TRUE WAY OF TRIUMPH 

AS the story goes, when the Greeks returned 
from Troy, they must sail by the island 
of the Sirens. As their bewitching strains 
began to salute the ears of the passing Greeks, 
the voyagers were caught with intense desire 
to fling themselves overboard and swim to the 
Sirens. But thus they would have been en- 
gulfed and drowned — and this was what the 
treacherous singers wanted. Then Odysseus 
compelled the Greeks to stuff their ears with 
wax, that they might not hear the Sirens, 
though all the time they wanted to. And 
thus the Greeks sailed safely by. 

But when the Argonauts sailed by that same 
island of the sohciting tempters, and the Sirens 
began to ply their music, Orpheus caught up 



164 

his lyre, and so filled the air with a better 
melody than the Sirens could possibly sing, 
that the Argonauts, ravished with the nobler 
music, did not care for the Sirens' songs, and 
sailed by, not simply safely, but triumphantly 
and with unstopped ears. 

Do you not see that this latter way of tri- 
umph was vastly loftier and more vanquishing, 
because it killed the appetency ? 

This is the way the Holy Spirit would have 
us triumph. Says the apostle : ' ' This I say 
then. Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not ful- 
fil the lust of the flesh. ' ' Make behef in the 
Holy Spirit a vital article of your creed. 

There is a Holy Spirit. God is not distant, 
yonder in some far-off heaven, "a kind of 
absentee God, sitting on the outside of his 
universe, and seeing it go. ' ' God is with us. 

Speak to him, then, for he hears, 
And Spirit with spirit may meet ; 

Closer is he than breathing, 

And nearer than hands and feet. 

Open your heart to God, give him residence, 
chance, room, and he, within you, shall work 
wonders. He will ravish you with a better 
music. More than that, he will so change and 
rearrange your nature that you shall love what 
God loves, and hate what God hates. You 



i65 

shall know the meaning of that great word of 
St. Augustine, ' ' Love God, and do what you 
please." By the ministry and power of the 
Spirit you shall be brought into such love to 
God that you shall not want to do but what 
pleases him. So passion shall be quieted, and 
evil thoughts get no room, and doubts be 
quenched, and bad habits cease to fascinate 
and thrall, and religious laggardness give place 
to glorious hberty. 

If you want blooms in winter you must force 
them in a hothouse. But when June comes 
flowers spring everywhere for you spontan- 
eously. The entrance into a man of the Di- 
vine Spirit is God's June for him. Then 
everything is easy. Then is he nobly delivered 
from guarded and hot-house constraint. This 
is the true way of triumph — not that of a hard 
repression, but that of a beautiful and gracious 
freedom which settles itself naturally into the 
right and good. 



XXIX 
GLORIFYING GOD 

1HAVE frequently asked people, in social 
religious meetings, what they thought was 
meant by the so frequent Scripture injunction 



i66 



that we glorify God. I do not just now re- 
member that I ever got a quick and clear 
answer to the question. People had a kind of 
hazy notion about it. But we should have a 
definite notion. Let us attempt to gain it. 

For example, our Lord says : ' ' Herein is 
my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. ' ' 
Our question is. How can the Christian by his 
fruit-bearing glorify God ? Already God shines 
with a glory limitless. How can any fruit- 
bearing of mine add to a glory already infinite ? 
How can you add anything to an over-brim- 
ming fullness ? 

But when we are exhorted in Scripture to 
glorify God, it does not mean that we are to 
attempt to add to, or to imagine that we can 
add to, the already sumless glory of the infinite 
God. It means that we are to display his 
glory, to become the surfaces, so to speak, 
striking on which it shall go reflected forth. 

The wavelet cannot add to the glory of the 
sun, but it can so catch and scatter the sun- 
light that the benign radiance shall seem more 
beautiful. The flash of the diamond does 
not make the sun more luminous, but opening 
its clear heart to the entrance of the sunbeam, 
it does so fling it out that you have a new joy 
in the sun's effulgence. 

She was not a very pleasant member of the 



167 

family. She was fretful, complaining, irritat- 
ing, set on a ministry of uncomfortableness. 
They sent her away to boarding-school. It 
was a good riddance. But there the Lord met 
her and she became a genuine Christian. 
Getting home, she was seen to be another 
person ; patient, cheerful, kind, beautiful, 
with a steady service of usefulness. A skepti- 
cal cousin looked at her askance for some time, 
attributing the change to any reason but the 
right one, and sure the old unpleasantness 
would soon display itself. But it did not. So 
he asked her the cause of the transformation. 
The reply was, that the grace of God had 
given her another sort of heart. He said to 
himself, *^ I don't believe that God has any- 
thing to do with it, though she thinks he had, ' ' 
and he set himself to trying to be as good as 
she. But where she all the time succeeded, 
he failed ; until at last, certain she had some 
help he missed, and giving his skepticism to the 
\vinds, he sought and found what new heart and 
power of continuance had come to her. 

I am sure you can see plainly that, while 
that Christian maiden did not add to the meas- 
ureless sum of God's glory, she did manifest 
forth and commend his glory, and so did 
in the most real way, in the precise way in 
which the Scripture means, glorify God. 



i68 

XXX 
JESUS IN HIS NAZARETH HOME 

DO not too much glorify it in your imagina- 
tion. Nazareth was a common town, 
lying in a fold among the hills which close on 
the north the plain of ^sdraelon, and not held 
in high repute. It was filled with common 
houses ; you can see such there to-day, just 
cubes of stone without exterior or interior ele- 
gance. Perhaps — I do not know — it may have 
been one of the poorest houses in the town. 
At any rate, a carpenter's family inhabited it ; 
the family of a man who was hard-handed and 
must toil for a living. It was in such a home 
that the consummate flower of humanity un- 
folded itself. 

But few glints break through the obscurity 
of the hfe of Jesus in this home in Nazareth. 
But what ghnts do are inestimably precious 
and shiningly suggestive. 

First gUnt. "And the child grew," as St. 
Luke tells us. Jesus submitted to the law of 
a progressive development. That is a most 
important lesson for us in this restless, rapid, 
impatient age. Think of it, Christ had come ! 
The angels had sung his coming. The world 
was waiting for him, dying for him. It would 



169 

seem that if there ever were need for immedi- 
ateness, for the quick seizure of the life-work, 
it was here. But God is wiser. He had or- 
dained the law of an advancing and time-con- 
suming growth. To that law, as the perfect 
human example, Christ submitted. For how 
long ? For thirty years. No hot rushing into 
the work of hfe, no hasty thrusting of the bur- 
dens of maturity upon immaturity. We look 
too much comparatively at the consummation, 
and forget the hidden, patient, careful gather- 
ing of life, experience, force, which made the 
consummation possible. 

*'And the child grew," and had time for 
growth. How often are children thrust into 
fashionable manhood and womanhood before 
they have begun to be men and women. 
Pushed from the seclusion of childhood into 
the glare of a fashionable publicity, tightly 
laced, thinly dressed, robbed of sleep, burned 
out by excitement, with physical vigor largely 
consumed before the time of youth has sped, 
there is little left in them upon which manhood 
and womanhood can draw ; they are old, 
though young. As over against this feverish, 
impoverishing haste, what depth of reserved 
quiet can you not hear in these words about 
the Holy Child, *' And the child grew." 

What rebuke here also to the common ten- 



170 

dency to superficiality. Too great swiftness of 
early life is invincibly hostile to depth and 
thoroughness. The true motto for life is : Not 
many things, but much ; not a thousand things 
glanced at and forgotten, but a few things 
known and held ; not a little gilding of knowl- 
edge sprinkled over a thousand ignorances, but 
some things so studied and understood that 
the gold of knowledge reaches to the innermost 
center of the thing. 

There is rebuke here also, in this fact of the 
growth of Jesus, to an undue precocity. Jesus, 
as child, was perfect child. Childhood did not 
thrust itself forward into manhood. When 
Christ was child, he was perfectly what the 
state of childhood required him to be. Pre- 
cocity is monstrosity. Childhood for child- 
hood, manhood for manhood ; that is the law. 
We do not want womanly girls and manly boys. 
We want girlish girls and boyish boys. We do 
not want boy preachers and child orators and 
infant prodigies, and people with finished edu- 
cations at eighteen. We want children in the 
time of childhood, and youths in the time of 
youthhood, that we may have full, strong, 
rounded men and women in the time of matur- 
ity. 

Second ghnt. He ' ' waxed strong in spirit, ' ' 
St. Luke further tells us. He gathered acces- 



171 

sions of spiritual strength. Strength of spirit 
is strength of will. Through all these silent 
years the holy will of Christ was never over- 
come. It withstood each temptation ; it van- 
quished every obstacle. Thus resisting, and 
conquering, and so gaining strength through 
successive steps, the holy will of Jesus waxed 
strong. Through the silent years of this home 
in Nazareth was slowly compacting that invinci- 
ble resolution which carried the Saviour to the 
^' It is finished " of the cross. 

The great thing our children need is this 
strength of spirit, this waxing of moral will. 
How many times is the fullness of the promise 
blighted and beggared by meanness of moral 
will. Look at Coleridge. How prodigal was 
providence of gifts to him, yet how small was 
the comparative return ! Gigantic in project- 
ing, lilliputian, comparatively, in executing, 
his was but the splendid fragment of a life, at 
best. The reason ? He did not wax strong 
in spirit. Seek you, for your child, this wax- 
ing of will toward righteousness and achieve- 
ment. Do not try to break your child' s will ; 
you break him if you do that. Teach him, 
rather, to set his will toward high and pure 
resolve, and so furnish him for life's conflict. 

Third gUnt. He was becoming ' ' filled with 
wisdom," St. Luke further tells us. Wisdom 



172 

is the noblest result of training. Wisdom is 
not knowledge, any more than the use of a 
faculty is the faculty itself. Wisdom is the 
ordering of knowledge toward a given end. 

Wisdom and knowledge, far from being one, 
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men, 
Wisdom in heads attentive to their own ; 
Knowledge is an unprofitable mass. 
The mere materials with which wisdom builds. 

I was in a foundry. There was rude pig-iron 
lying about. There were also molds of various 
parts of engines. The rude, unmolded iron 
was nothing worth for any function in an en- 
gine. It could play no part in its crude state. 
It must first be thrown into the furnace, and 
then be run into the mold, before it could be- 
come valuable as a portion of an engine. Its 
value was potential only, unmolded. It was 
real, molded. That unmanufactured iron is 
knowledge. That iron melted, shaped, organ- 
ized to an end, is wisdom. The wonderful 
wisdom of Jesus was the issue of the silent 
years in the home in Nazareth. What sugges- 
tion here toward the training of our children 
into a high efficiency ; into the transmuting of 
knowledge and experience into wisdom. 

Fourth glint. ' ' And the grace of God was 
upon him," St. Luke further tells us. There 



173 

can be no worthful growth except it be growth 
into the grace of God. Without the grace of 
God, there is even a kind of doom in growth, 
for it is growth away from God. Without the 
grace of God, waxing strong in spirit is but 
gaining in strength of purpose against God. 
Without the grace of God, the wisdom we get 
is only the shifty, dexterous, ignoble time- 
serving of this poor world. The grace of God 
— that is our mightiest need, for ourselves, for 
our children. 

Fifth glint. *' And was subject unto them," 
St. Luke in addition tells us. There was 
parental rule and law in that home in Naz- 
areth, and Jesus came under them. In him 
there was no wild breaking from restraint and 
right subjection. I am sure too, there was wise 
and loving parenthood in that home. '' He 
rules the house," they told me of a boisterous 
and forward and petted child. Bad symptom, 
bad prophecy for life ! Father and mother 
under the child, not the child under them. 
But the Perfect Child was under rule. Homes 
are only rightly organized when parents are 
lovingly but really atop. 

Sixth glint. * ' Is not this the carpenter ? ' ' 
St. Mark tells us the people asked, smitten 
with wonder at him, when he assumed his pub- 
lic ministry. So Jesus, when the time came 



174 

for it, set his hand to the hard, daily toil. So 
he put a crown on labor, on the doing the 
common tasks the days bring. We can only 
do larger work for the Father in the future as 
we are faithful in doing smaller work for him 
in the present. It was Jesus, faithful to the 
Father's business in the carpenter's shop, who 
was faithful to the Father's business in the 
public ministry and on the cross. It is the 
faithful doing of what is small that shall lead us 
into the capacity and possibility of doing what 
is great. 



XXXI 
A SUCCESSFUL COURTSHIP 

A SUCCESSFUL courtship is one that issues 
in a successful marriage. 
For there may be a marriage that falls far 
below the real and high ideal of it, and yet is 
a marriage. The feet of it never reach the 
loftier heights ; they rather drag themselves, 
perhaps painfully, perhaps with a dull and un- 
hoping hstlessness, amid the dust and mists and 
commonplaces of the lower levels. There are 
marriages and marriages. There are matches 
merely, and not matings. There are com- 
panionships without comradeships. There are 



175 

those that have said together the irrevocable 
words, who somehow find that the utter fullness 
of the heart has not gone with the binding 
words. There are those that are one, yet have 
stayed sadly two ; hearts are pitched in differ- 
ent keys, and though there is no special jan- 
gling, there is the missing of the perfect chime. 

If people find themselves, in any wise, in 
such a marriage, in no place in the wide world 
are the grace and graciousness of Christ more 
needed. There ought to be between two such 
the most sedulous and steady attempt and pur- 
pose to gain a real mating. There ought to 
be the religious and persistent holding to all 
sweet courtesies. There ought to be the most 
vigorous resolve to grow toward and into each 
other. There ought to be the incessant culti- 
vating, and at any cost, of all intimate sympa- 
thies. He ought to bring himself to her hkings, 
and she to his. So a real comradeship may 
come, and should, at any hazard, be made to 
come. Thus a marriage that began in a mere 
matching may issue, and ought to issue, and 
certainly can issue, in a mating of souls, as two 
instruments of music are mated when they are 
perfectly attuned. 

But I am thinking of courtship and not of 
marriage, of the vestibule to the temple of the 
home rather than of the temple itself A 



176 

courtship is in the truest meaning successful 
when it so discloses nature to nature and heart 
to heart, and declares two so cordially fitted to 
each other, that, without special wrench and 
strain, marriage becomes the spontaneous, 
beautiful, utterly satisfying and fragrant bloom 
of the whole courtship. 

Ask yourself then, very carefully, prayer- 
fully, in the deepest sense religiously, — for it is 
a very mighty and making or marring matter 
to which just now, O my courting friend, you 
are giving thought, ^ask yourself, as if your 
life depended on the answer, — and it verily 
does, as it hangs on scarcely another answer, — 
ask yourself, '' Do I unhesitatingly believe 
that she is precisely fitted to be the wife for 
me?" 

That is by no means a selfish question. 
That is a question in which is wrapped her 
weal as much as yours. I think it sheathes 
her weal even more than it can yours. For, 
forevermore a woman risks in marriage be- 
yond that which a man does, or ever can. For 
a man marriage is a critical circumstance, but 
for a woman it is unspeakably momentous. 
A man has other things with which to fill his 
hands and time ; his business, the struggle of 
the daily life, the necessary mingling with the 
great world. If home fails him, it is a failure 



177 

terribly sad, but perhaps not so tragically sad 
as if the home fails her. For she leaves every- 
thing, O my courting friend, if you persuade 
her to marry you. She must find her whole life 
and home with you. You bid her lay off, for 
your sake, the dear paternal name. You bid 
her cut herself away, as no man can cut him- 
self apart, from old associations. You call her 
to risk her entire self in a devotion sacredly 
and awfully measureless, and come to you. 

Ah, my friend, a thing like that is not a 
thing to be asked without utmost care and fore- 
thought, is not a thing to be asked unless you 
are as sure of yourself as sure can be, sure that 
you utterly love her, that to you, of all women, 
she is queen, that there is no draft she can 
possibly make hereafter on your affection that 
you will not rejoice instantly and lavishly to 
meet. 

Mr. Ruskin says, — and I think his words 
ought to be most heedfully regarded by any 
man fascinated at some first sight, and begin- 
ning to be deliciously snared in the tremors, 
endeavors, hope, longings, of what we know 
as courting, — Mr. Ruskin says, speaking to 
young women : 

''What do you think the beautiful word, 
'wife,' comes from? It is the great word 
with which the English and Latin languages 

M 



178 

conquered the French and Greek. I hope the 
French will some day get a word for it instead 
of that oi femme. But what do you think it 
comes from? The great value of the Saxon 
words is that they mean something. Wife 
means ' weaver. ' You must either be house- 
wives or house-moths, remember that. In the 
deep sense, you must either weave men's for- 
tunes and embroider them, or feed upon and 
bring them to decay. Wherever a true wife 
comes, home is always around her. The stars 
may be over her head, the glow-worm in the 
night's cold grass may be the fire at her 
feet ; but home is where she is, and for a 
noble woman it stretches far around her, bet- 
ter than houses ceiled with cedar, or painted 
with vermilion, shedding its quiet light for 
those who else are homeless. ' ' 

Well, does she seem to be that sort of 
woman to you ? Is she such a beautiful and 
lovely and loving ''weaver" ? Do you think 
her head and hand and heart will be deft 
and glad at such weaving? Are you sure 
of it ? Are you getting more sure of it every 
time you see and talk with her ? That is the 
chance of courtship and the deep meaning of 
it, that you get sure of it. 

Then, O my sister courted, have you thought 
well what ''husband ' ' means ? You for whom 



179 

the decision of the question is so unutterably 
serious ; you, nested now in the paternal 
home, and yet astir with such tremulous im- 
pulse toward a new home that you tenderly 
dream of caUing in such dear and new signifi- 
cance your own, and with him — do you know, 
have you thought well, what ' ' husband ' * 
means ? 

*'Itis a pretty word ; the house-band that 
ties all together ; is not that the meaning?" 
Yes ; that is the meaning, and it is a word 
more than pretty ; it is a word great and grave 
and gracious and noble also. 

But is he, this young man that is courting 
you, likely, think you, to be that sort of a man 
for you ? Is he honorable and pure and strong 
and tender enough to be all that the great 
word ''husband" means to you? Are you 
sure of it ? Are you as sure of it as you can 
be of anything? Does your heart tell you, 
when you are alone with yourself and think- 
ing and his image rises before you, does your 
heart tell you, and with no quavering about 
the answer when you interrogate it, ''Yes, I 
am sure that the band of his love and of his 
protection is the band that I want to have 
bound about me for my whole life long ' ' ? 

I think a successful courtship is one that 
really discloses to each such things as these, 



i8o 



which makes and means a deep and sacred ac- 
quaintanceship, which shows each heart that 
its real rest, resource, satisfying refuge, is in 
the heart of the other. A successful court- 
ship is a courtship that lays open to each such 
fitness for marriage before marriage. After 
such a courtship marriage is the safest, most 
royal, noblest, of all things. In the marriage 
issuing from such courtship there shall not be 

The little rift within the lute, 

That by and by will make the music mute, 

And, ever widening, slowly silence all. 
The little rift within the lover's lute, 
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit. 

That, rotting inward, slowly moulders all. 

Therefore, generally speaking, I think that 
is most likely to be a successful courtship, in 
the great sense of success that I have been 
urging, which is not a hurried or impulsive 
one. Usually the best courtship is the one 
that gives chance for the most thorough ac- 
quaintance before marriage. 

I need scarcely say, in view of all that I 
have been saying, that the most successful 
courtship will be a religious courtship, a court- 
ship in which hearts find themselves religiously 
at one. The best place in which to make a 
marriage is at the foot of the cross of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, with the spirit stream- 



i8i 



ing from that cross flooding and interpenetrat- 
ing. At Christ's cross is the best place to do 
every worthy deed in this world. 

I beseech you, dear young friends of mine, 
if your courtship, bringing, as I am sure it 
ought, better acquaintance, discloses, on the 
whole, to both or to either one of you, an in- 
creasing unlikeness of each to each instead of 
an increasing and more trustful likeness, then, 
I beseech you, stop your courting. Even if 
your courting has gone on into engagement, 
stop your courting and break your engage- 
ment. Do not let any false pride hinder you. 
Be true. Be true. Be true to each other 
and to yourself. It is infinitely better to be 
sorry before marriage than to be sorry after 
marriage and because of it. 

Never marry either simply for the sake of 
marrying or to reform somebody. True words 
these that some one else has spoken : 

*'The truest wedded hfe can only come 
out of the truest unwedded life. It is blank 
folly to imagine that a woman who has had 
half a dozen 'affairs of the heart,' as they 
are called, can wed a man who has sown his 
wild oats and make a happy match of it. 
' Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ? 
Who shall abide in his holy place ? He that 
hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath 



l82 



not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn 
deceitfully.' You say that means the mer- 
chant and the politician, and the man and 
the woman who would experience religion in 
the purest and loftiest sense. I say it means 
fitness for a true wedding as certainly as any 
other thing we can think of. There is no 
reach in our life in which these great first 
things can be more essential, either for this 
world or the world to come. You say it is 
seeing life. I say it is seeing death. It is 
building a closet to hold a skeleton in the holy 
of holies. ' ' 

God bless you in your courting, dear young 
people. Be sure there can be no successful 
courtship or resulting marriage either that does 
not have God's blessing. But with his bless- 
ing and your own truth to yourself and to each 
other, your courting and marrying may seem 
as if a fragment of heaven's glory had fallen 
down and broken, shining, upon your heads. 

XXXII 

WHAT THE BIBLE HAS OF CHEER 
AND HOPE FOR THE AGED 

I WAS sitting by my mother not so very long 
ago. She was far on in life, looking 
through almost the last of its westward win- 



1 83 

dows. The disease of which she died, a lin- 
gering and painful one, had already captured 
the outposts of her health, and the waning 
vitality which age brings could not strongly 
summon itself for resistance. That day — it 
was a passing day amid a journey when I had 
skipped some trains to see her — it seemed to 
my anxiety that she was weak unwontedly. I 
plainly saw fresh ravages of age and sickness, 
I was noting the thinness of her hand, the 
kind of dead whiteness of her rippling hair, 
that used to curl in beautiful brown luxuriance 
about her face when I was a boy, the uncer- 
tainty of movement in her who had been to 
me the impersonation of elastic, direct vigor. 
There was a great and rebelhous pain in me 
as I marked these things, and I burst out, 
' ' Mother, I don' t like this growing old. ' ' 

It seemed to me I never heard anything so 
beautiful as the music of her answer. There 
was such submission in it, and yet such tremor- 
less faith, and even a kind of subdued jubi- 
lance, as though she had no complaint nor 
even any backward-pulHng wish ; and at the 
same time a light as of a soft trust fell upon 
her face as she simply repHed, ' ' But we have 
to, my boy. ' ' It was the way she said it, the 
sweet, gracious. Christian way, as though she 
were a child whose hand was surely grasped by 



1 84 

the great Father as she was going on into age 
and death, that ntiade such impression on me. 
I rarely saw her after till I saw her body in the 
coffin. It was my mother's swan-song to me. 
What my mother said is sternly true : 
* ' But we have to grow old, my boy. ' ' 
If we live long enough, the most vigorous 
of us must in time become conscious that the 
years have drained his strength, that the keep- 
ers of the house tremble, that those that look 
out of the windows are darkened. 

As I write a book of daily devotion Ues 
before me. Opening to its fly-leaves I find 
such sentences as these written on them by 
the hand of my aged father, who, since my 
mother's death, has exchanged his age for the 
eternal youth of heaven : 

* ' This manual of devotion was daily used 
for years in the evening of her Hfe ; this book, 
and also her Bible, were called for by her 
every morning, and kept within her reach 
through the day." 

Well, I think I can do nothing better than 
to open this manual of devotion and note a 
few of the Scripture passages my mother's 
failing eyes fell on as the days went, and the 
teachings and disclosures of which made the 
evening of her life as restful and as radiant as 
when the sun sinks beneath a June horizon. 



i85 

' ' I must work the works of him that sent 
me while it is day." ''He that watereth shall 
be watered. " " My meat is to do the will of 
him that sent me, and to finish his work." 
" Occupy till I come." 

There is sometimes a sad giving up and 
letting go in age. More than needfully the 
hands loosen grasp upon the daily duty ; more 
than wisely, interest in what of works or pleas- 
ure or intercourse the days bring is allowed to 
lessen ; more than should be, those who have 
been in the van of endeavor drop altogether 
from the ranks, or too easily allow themselves 
to be relegated to the stragghng rear. Of 
course this, in a measure, must be. But there 
is a truth of proportion. It ought not to be 
more than it must be. And I think there 
should be steady determination that that 
**must" be as little imperious as possible. 

I have in mind now a dear and genial old 
gentleman ; yet you would think him almost a 
boy for the kindly, glad heart in him. He 
has known great sorrows. He is left, in his 
old age, quite alone ; his immediate family are 
all dead, or have built other and distant homes. 
But to meet him is a day in May instead of in 
December. Dear old gentleman ! how my 
heart warms to him as I write, thinking of him. 
He is keeping at such duty as he can do, and 



1 86 



he can do much, as manfully as when he was 
at the noon of his strength. The children 
flock to him as the birds do to the summer, 
and he is as gracious to them as the summer is 
to the birds. His interest in passing things he 
will not let lose edge ; he is baffling age ; bet- 
ter than that, he is proving how nobly and 
royally yoMig age can be. Life is correspond- 
ence with environment. The larger the envir- 
onment the richer the life. This one of whom 
I write is living, even amid the frosts of age, 
so richly and so broadly because, with heroic 
and trustful faith, he is keeping himself in con- 
tact with rich and various environment. 

And in this way my mother's old age was 
beautiful and beneficent. She would occupy 
//// her Lord called. She would finish his 
work. While the day lasted she would work 
the works the Lord set next even her failing 

hands. 

Age is opportunity no less 
Than youth itself, though in another dress. 

"My times are in thy hand." ''Casting 
all your care upon him, for he careth for you. ' ' 
These passages, and especially in her later 
years, were mighty nourishers of my mother's 
enlarging faith. As age weakened her faith 
augmented. But faith must have an object on 
which it can lay hold. The way to increase 



i87 

faith is to bid it get stronger grip on somewhat, 
'lliat somewhat upon which my aged mother's 
faith laid steadily more grappling grasp were 
such Scripture passages as these. So her faith, 
amid her age, was like a growing tree, height- 
ening, broadening. Do you know that ex- 
quisite setting to music, that first Scripture, 
' ' My times are in thy hands, ' ' by Miss War- 
ing? It was one of my mother's favorites. 

Father, I know that all my life 

Is portioned out for me ; 
And the changes that are sure to come 

I do not fear to see ; 
But I ask thee for a present mind 

hitent on pleasing thee. 

And that other passage, ' ' Casting all your 
care upon him, for he careth for you," is 
singularly significant. That first word '' care ' ' 
is our human word for it. It means literally, 
that which distracts, prevents wholeness of 
attention, and so joyfulness and precision of 
duty ; that which scares and damages and de- 
feats ; that which pulls irregularly in two direc- 
tions ; that which cuts to pieces and ravels 
into shreds. But that second word translated 
''care" is an altogether different one. It is 
the word for the divine thoughtfulness. It 
means a deep, loving, solicitous, infinitely 
inteUigent concern for you. And the way 



i88 

to get rid of our human anxiousness is to 
cast everything over on to the divine, loving, 
personal concern. This my mother increas- 
ingly did as the years added to their numbers, 
so her old age was increasingly serene and rest- 
ful. 

"The spirit shall return unto God who gave 
it." ''Whilst we are at home in the body, we 
are absent from the Lord. . . We are confi- 
dent and willing rather to be absent from the 
body and to be present with the Lord." 
" With Christ, which is far better." 

When his age was eighty years John Quincy 
Adams was met on the streets of Boston by an 
old friend, who, taking his trembhng hand, 
said: "Good-morning! And how is John 
Quincy Adams to-day ? " " Thank you, ' ' the 
ex-president replied, "John Quincy Adams 
himself is well, sir ; quite well, I thank you. 
But the house in which he lives at present is 
becoming dilapidated. It is tottering upon its 
foundation. Time and the seasons have nearly 
destroyed it. Its roof is pretty well worn out. 
Its walls are much shattered, and it trembles 
with every wind. The old tenement is be- 
coming almost uninhabitable, and I think John 
Quincy Adams will have to move out of it 
soon ; but he himself is quite well, sir, quite 
well." 



Such was my mother's certainty. She was 
utterly persuaded that it was not she herself 
that was aging and sickening, but simply her 
body in which for the time was dwelling her 
real and essential self. She was sure of the 
sharpest sort of contrast between her spirit and 
the material enswathement of it. It was this 
last which was feeble and aged, not in the least 
her soul, herself So she looked forward with 
keen anticipation to that other life to which, 
while the years were aging her, they were at 
the same time bringing her nearer, that other, 
grander, eternal life, the best, brightest, most 
alluring symbol of which is "with Christ, 
which is far better. ' ' So her age, instead of 
clouding her, brightened her. There was wist- 
ful and thriUing expectancy in it. As one 
about embarking for another land wonders of 
its new experiences, so she, soon to be from 
home as to the body, awaited with longing and 
yet restful and holy eagerness the being at 
home with the Lord. 

I think there is no certainty the aged should 
more steadily cherish and rejoice in than this, 
that the faihng tabernacle is but the failing 
tabernacle ; that the real self is in nowise itself 
aging, nor can possibly, albeit it is finding 
itself hindered in various expression by the fail- 
ing tabernacle, as a broken instrument hinders 



190 

the musician ; that paradise, disimprisonment 
from the failing body, is youth, vigor, unwea- 
ried delight and service and development. 

' ' Yea, though I walk through the valley of 
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for 
thou art with me. ' ' Strikingly was this Scrip- 
ture, over which in her last years my mother 
trustingly brooded, fulfilled to her when the 
time of her change came. She was so far gone 
she could no longer whisper or even move her 
lips ; she was so weak she could not hft a 
finger, when suddenly just at the last moment, 
a radiance like a shred of heaven's glory fell 
upon her face ; she sat up in her bed, she 
reached out her arms, her eyes seemed en- 
tranced with delight and wonder ; and she who 
just now could not move herself or speak a 
word, exclaimed in full, strong voice, ' ' Come, 
Lord Jesus ! ' ' and falling back was gone. He 
who had promised to be with her was with her. 
She did not pass through the strange way 
alone ! 



XXXIII 
IMMORTALITY 

THAT is a brave poem of Robert Browning's 
entitled "Prospice" : 



191 

Fear death ! — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe ; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go ; 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall, 
Tho' a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained. 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and fore- 
bore. 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 

The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute's at end, 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy. 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
Oh, thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest ! 

Yes, it is a brave poem. But it is plain to 
see that its ring of bravery is a dauntless faith 
in immortality notwithstanding death. Such 
brave notes could not possibly be struck were 



192 

it true that death not only slew the body, but 
also quenched the soul. 

Who has not been conscious of this longing 
of one of the loftiest rulers of our modern 
thought ? 

'* Oh, if this life were all that I could have, 
I should weep, it seems to me, from the pres- 
ent hour to the very end, unless I could say, 
as the ancients did, * Let us eat, drink, and 
be merry. To-morrow we die, so let us make 
the best of the little time that is left us. ' I 
should be in a state of wanton, merry despair, 
on the one side, or of tearful, sad despair on 
the other side. I must live again. I must 
make the experiment of life once more. I 
have made poor work here, but I have met 
with just success enough to feel that if I had a 
better chance I could do something. I am 
like a man that takes the first canvas to paint 
a picture. He does not know what he will do. 
He lays in forms in all sorts of ways without 
coming to any satisfactory result. At last he 
says : ' I cannot make anything of that picture, 
but I have a conception. Bring me a fresh 
canvas and I will try again, when I think I 
shall have better success. ' I have long been 
trying to paint a true life and have only par- 
tially succeeded, but if God Almighty will give 
me another canvas, I think I can paint better. ' ' 



193 

Well, what reasons are there for believing in 
the immortality of the soul ? Let us for a little 
marshal our reasons. 

There is the reason historical. By this is 
meant that through all the ages of history man 
has perpetually and persistently believed in his 
immortaUty. When you think of it, you will 
discover that nothing can be more surprising 
than this indomitable behef, for than death 
nothing is more ruthless and universal. Take 
John Stuart Mills' terrific arraignment of na- 
ture : 

** Nature impales men, breaks them as if on 
the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild 
beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with 
stones, like the first Christian martyrs, starves 
them with hunger, freezes them with cold, 
poisons them by the quick or slow venom of 
her exhalations, and has hundreds of other 
hideous deaths in reserve." 

That is true. Nature means death to every 
man sooner or later. That, notwithstanding 
the certainty and varied forms of death, men 
should have, generally speaking, always had, a 
kind of inevitable conviction that they should 
yet live otherwhere is most surprising, is most 
noteworthy. Can such rooted conviction mean 
a cheat, a phantasm ? 

There is the reason based upon the general 

N 



194 

indestructibility of things. The soul is imma- 
terial. The soul is intricate with matter, but 
it is not matter. You cannot express the facts 
of soul in the terms of matter. Says Mr. Tyn- 
dall : 

* ' The passage from the physics of the brain 
to the corresponding facts of consciousness is 
unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought 
and a definite molecular action in the brain 
occur simultaneously; we do not possess the 
intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment 
of the organ which would enable us to pass, by 
a process of reason, from the one phenomenon 
to the other. ' ' 

Says Prof. John Fiske : 

** Nothing could be more grossly unscientific 
than the famous remark of Cabanis, that the 
brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. 
It is not even correct to say that thought goes 
on in the brain. What goes on in the brain 
is an amazingly complex series of molecular 
movements, with which thought and feeling 
are in some unknown way correlated, not as 
effects or as causes, but as concomitants. ' ' 

But now matter is indestructible ; it changes 
form, but it remains in atomic structure. Cer- 
tainly if analogy ever points to anything, it 
points steadily to the fact that the wonderful 
soul which informs and directs matter must be, 



195 

at least, as lasting as the matter which is its 
servant. If you say this argument involves 
also the immortality of animals, I reply, let it ; 
what if it does? But to me this analogical 
argument is very strong : indestructible matter ; 
soul other than and nobler than matter ; there- 
fore, indestructible, immortal soul. 

There is the reason based upon our manifest 
present incompleteness. Oh, when a man has 
apparently reached the utmost point of devel- 
opment here ; when he has weighed the stars 
in the balances of his formulae ; when he has 
snatched his secrets from the flaming guardian- 
ship of the sun ; when he has achieved the 
loftiest character ; when he has met and mas- 
tered obstacle — even at his highest point, how 
little he knows, how fragmentary he is. 

Then still the heart a far-off glory sees, 

Strange music hears ; 
A something not of earth still haunts the breeze, 

The sun and spheres. 

All things that be, all love, all thought, all joy, 

Sky, cloud, and star. 
Spell-bind the man, as once the growing boy, 

And point afar. 

Point to some world of endless, endless truth, 

Of life and light, 
Where souls, renewed in an immortal youth. 

Shall know the infinite. 



196 

There is the reason based upon the persist- 
ence and continuity of our personality. Walk- 
ing about the old home of my boyhood some 
time since, at once the laws of association began 
to cause to emerge within my consciousness a 
hundred forgotten things. But of this I was 
certain, with the granitic certainty of conscious- 
ness, that I was the same person who had been 
a boy amid those scenes. I was changed in- 
deed by growth and various study and experi- 
ence, but only as the oak is changed from the 
slight shoot beginning to lift itself amid the 
dried leaves and under the forest shade to the 
same oak full grown. Meantime, how had my 
body changed? I did not even stand in the 
same body I stood in when a boy. The parti- 
cles of matter going to form that had drifted 
away and been altogether replaced by other 
particles. This had taken place many times 
between the period of my boyhood and that of 
my manhood. But I myself, consciously the 
same self, had persisted through all the ever 
overturning changes. So I shall persist through 
the last change, which we call death. I think 
this argument very strong. Since the soul per- 
sists through gradual changes as revolutionary 
as the change of death itself, is it to be sup- 
posed that the sudden change of death is to 
annihilate the soul, blot it out ? It cannot be. 



197 

There is the reason ethical. As inevitably 
as the eye demands the light or the stomach 
food, so inevitably does the ethical instinct in 
us demand a world where the balances of jus- 
tice swing even. 

If anything is evident in this world, it is 
evident that in this world the balances of jus- 
tice do not swing even. I think this almost 
the most terrific, and at the same time ethic- 
ally great, poem I ever came on. It is by 
Stopford A. Brooke : 

Three men went out one summer night, 

No care had they or aim, 
And dined and drank. Ere we go home, 

We'll have, they said, a game. 

Three girls began that summer night 

A Hfe of endless shame. 
And went through drink, disease, and death 

As swift as racing flame. 

Lawless and homeless, foul, they died ; 

Rich, loved, and praised, the men ; 
But when they all shall meet with God, 

And Justice speaks — what then ? 

And the conscience in us demands, and will 
not cease demanding, though death do hide 
them, that somehow, somewhere, they shall all 
meet with God and that Justice shall speak. 

But as the sun relieves us of the need of 
stars, how does the resurrection of our Lord 



198 

relieve us from any need of further argumenta- 
tion toward the immortality of the soul ! Said 
that great and patient student of history, Dr. 
Arnold, of Rugby, and also professor of history 
at Oxford University : 

** I have been used for many years to study 
the history of other times, to examine and 
weigh the evidences of those who have written 
about them, and I know of no one fact in the 
history of mankind which is proved by better 
and fuller evidence of every sort, to the mind 
of a fair inquirer, than that Christ died and 
rose again from the deady 

And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the 
historic certainty that beyond death there is 
another life, that death is not wall, rather only 
door. 

XXXIV 

CHRIST WITH US 

"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us." 

IN this sentence from John's Gospel, we 
come upon the majestic verity of the in- 
carnation. If we would know the antecedent 
dignity and being of the Word, we find them 
abundantly and luminously stated in the earher 
verses of this first chapter. 



199 

This Gospel opens with the sublime an- 
nouncement, ' ' In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. ' ' In the beginning was the Word — 
that is before the beginning, at the moment 
of the beginning, when the fiat of creation 
sounded forth, and the vacant spaces began to 
be peopled with suns and stars and systems, 
and all the thronging processions of various 
Hfe. Then the Word was ; was before that 
beginning ; himself in life before the faintest 
traces of any other life commenced to take 
dim shape at the behest of the creative voice. 
The Word was pre-existent. The Word was 
with God — that is, with the Father, and in 
some sense distinct from him. That preposi- 
tion * ' with ' ' involves these two ideas — that 
the Word had a conscious existence distinct 
from the Father, and that he also in this ex- 
istence was associated with the Father in 
mutual fellowship. 

But, lest by any means we should be led to 
ascribe to this ' ' Word ' ' a kind of existence 
lower than the Divine, there immediately fol- 
lows this other statement. And the Word was 
God. It is impossible that any other mean- 
ing be wrested from this mighty utterance — 
mighty in its simplicity. In the same sense 
exactly in which God the Father is divine, in 



that same sense exactly is the Word, the Son, 
divine. 

And then the evangelist goes on immedi- 
ately to ascribe the attributes of Deity to this 
Word. He tells us that the Word was the 
Creator. All things were made by him ; and 
without him was not anything made that was 
made. Or, to throw a httle more of the 
sounding emphasis of the original into our 
translation, without him was not one thing 
made that hath been made. The Father 
created, but he created through Christ — ^just 
as the Father saves, but saves through Christ. 
Christ is Creator as well as Saviour. We have 
shorn him too much of his divine dignity by 
forgetting that his voice was the creative voice. 
Christ kindled the sun. Christ swung the 
stars into their orbits. Christ started the liv- 
ing pulses of your soul and mine. All things 
were made by him. Creation is a divine act. 
It was Christ's divine hand that was active in 
the creation. In him was hfe — he was the 
fontal principle of hfe in all the living. 

Then John goes on to tell us that this pre- 
existent, creating, life-giving, divine Word was 
made flesh. That Word ' ' flesh ' ' stands 
broadly in Scripture for our human nature. 
That the Word was made flesh, means that the 
Word became man. The divine Word who 



was one with God, as God, became one with 
us, as man. The divine nature was married 
to our human nature. There, in that manger 
in Bethlehem, there, in that Babe waihng in a 
maiden's arms, was the incarnation consum- 
mated. Through the door of birth the divine 
Word entered into our human life. He be- 
came thus as thoroughly man as he had been 
thoroughly God. Just as he had been per- 
sonally conscious of all that is divine, so now, 
being made flesh, he becomes personally con- 
scious of all that is human. Just as his divin- 
ity is real divinity, so now is his humanity a 
real humanness. As he was and is the God of 
every man, so now just as deeply is he the 
brother of every man. The deity which is 
over man stoops to brotherhood with man in 
the incarnation — and the Word was made 
flesh. 

But let us consider another term of this great 
statement — and dwelt among us. The world 
' ' dwelt ' ' signifies strictly, ' ' tabernacled, ' ' or 
pitched his tent among us. The word is not 
used in the sense of a brief sojourning, but 
rather in that of a permanent stay. So in 
the Revelation John says that he that sitteth . 
on the throne shall dwell among his people. 
And then again he says, "Behold the taber- 
nacle of God is with men, and he will dwell 



202 

with them," remain dwelling, staying perma- 
nently among them. And in this sense I 
think the word *' dwelt " is to be taken here. 
Christ pitched his tent among men, and he 
keeps it pitched among them. Christ dwelt 
in human nature in the sense of a permanent 
stay in human nature. I am sure we are very 
apt to mistake here, and dim the wonderful 
brightness of that divine sacrifice for us, by 
misconception. 

Have you never found yourself thinking 
something like this ? After all, was that sacri- 
fice so abysmal? A thousand years were but 
as one day with him. Thirty-three years of 
toil and trouble and endurance — what were 
these to him just dipping down from glory, 
becoming for a moment shadowed with this 
earthly state, and then rising into glory? 
What was that but as the merest inch of time 
compared with the eternity of glory before 
and the eternity of glory after? But I am 
sure that we have not enough remembered the 
fact that when Christ became one with man he 
came to dwell with man. When he humbled 
himself to become formed in fashion as a man, 
he humbled himself to remain in fashion as a 
man. He did not just descend into human 
nature to stay in it for thirty-three years. He 
entered into human nature to wear it forever. 



203 

The condescension was an eternal condescen- 
sion. John saw him in the Revelation — the 
central sun of the heavenly glories — but as a 
Lamb that had been slain^ with the marks of 
the sacrifice still upon him. 

To be sure he has risen into glory, but it 
is into the glory of a glorified humanity. 
The human nature which he took upon him- 
self at the incarnation he has never laid aside, 
nor will he ever put it off. Christ is as much 
human at the right hand of the throne to- 
day as when the heat smote him in Samaria, 
or sleep fell upon him at the sea of Galilee, 
or the spear cut his heart in twain on Cal- 
vary. He did not yield himself to the hu- 
man condition for a moment — then casting 
it away, and trampling it beneath him. He 
yielded himself to the human condition for- 
ever, and bore our human nature with him 
far above all principahty and power and might 
and dominion and every name that is named, 
not only in this world, but also in that which 
is to come. The glory which he won through 
sacrifice, he won for humanity. The glory 
which he wears, he wears as man — as deeply 
and thoroughly as his glory is worn as God. 
His condescension was not anything temporary ; 
it was something eternal. 

In a certain sense Christ is in continual 



204 

sacrifice — for he, Deity, remains in that which 
is less than Deity — humanity. He dwelt 
among us. So then we have not an High 
Priest who cannot be touched with the feel- 
ings of our infirmity. 



FEB 23 ^^99 



,!7E,Rl^RY OF CONGRESS 



019 971 943 9 



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